Step by step guide on Facebook Xero integration
Xero is an accounting software for businesses. Businesses use this to manage their business finances and connect them with other systems.
Since this is a cloud-based application, even a virtual accountant can efficiently organize your company’s disbursements.
If you are using Xero or planning to use it, understanding its API-level integrations with other applications is important. One such useful function is a Facebook Xero integration.
Anyone can set up Xero integration with Facebook in 5 simple steps.
Benefits of integrating Facebook with Xero
Xero integration with Facebook can be beneficial to the accounting, sales, and marketing teams. More than a social media platform, Facebook can also act as a potential digital shop where customers can visit and buy products.
Xero, on the other hand, is an accounting tool that collects bill payments, keeps track of receipts, reconciles bank accounts, etc. By integrating both of them, you get access to a wider range of customer data and perform more than your capabilities.
Here is why exactly you should integrate Facebook with Xero.
1. Improve the performance and measurement of ad campaigns
Every business with an account on Facebook has experimented with Facebook ads.
It’s a successful method to bring more leads due to the number of its consistent users. When you run Facebook ads, you don’t stop with just one ad. It’s common to have multiple ads targeting different groups and focusing on different benefits.
By activating the Facebook Xero integration, you can understand your campaigns better and pick out the best-performing campaigns based on the ROI generated.
Your marketing team no longer needs to make spreadsheets with the results of campaigns to show the performance of each campaign because Xero can show you how many invoices have been generated, and other purchase records.
2. Reducing operational costs associated with manual processes
Many companies have noticed a significant reduction in marketing and sales costs after Facebook Xero integration.
They could narrow down their customers and create ultra-personalized campaigns on Facebook, which can minimize unnecessary marketing spending.
You don’t need additional team members to manually update and handle customer purchase records. You gain valuable insights into customers’ spending patterns without spending any money.
3. Give visibility to the entire sales funnel
Having a Facebook shop alone won’t help you understand your customers’ purchasing patterns and behaviors. For that to happen, you should have access to their previous records, touchpoints, and their entire customer journey.
By letting seamless information flow between Xero and Facebook, you can gain increased visibility into your sales funnel and have hands-on access to comprehensive data.
Xero integration with Facebook opens the door to a wide customer base pool that was earlier available in Xero. If the customer has made a purchase long ago, you don’t have to treat and nurture them like a new customer.
Instead, you can confidently touch base with them through a reminder or show what’s new in your shop. That’s the privilege Facebook Xero integration offers you.
4. Generate invoices and automatically process payments in Xero
It’s okay for a business to be in multiple places and make sales through email, website, pop-up stores, and social media platforms. But it won’t be right if you drag your customer from one place to another during the sales process.
Make a sale where it happens and close the deal in the same place. Through Facebook Xero integration, you will be able to generate an invoice within Facebook and share it with your customers.
Once you collect the payment, you don’t have to manually create a new record for the customer in Xero. It can trigger timely updates to your customers about the processed payment too.
Processing a payment is an important step of a sale — through Xero, collecting the payment and reporting becomes easier.
5. Eliminate the need to export and import data every single time
With Facebook Xero integration, you establish a connection between two significant applications, one that holds your customer information and another that acts as a marketplace.
Traditionally, you will be downloading reports and spreadsheets and feeding one into another. That’s double the manual work and might involve people from different teams.
There are sales associates who are dedicated to working on filtering out and downloading customer data.
Manually doing this is only a waste of time. Instead, you can safely let Xero integration with Facebook happen and make the data readily available whenever and wherever you need it.
Steps to set up Facebook Xero Integration
Connecting Xero with Facebook is simple and won’t require all your time. Here is how you can do it.
1. Set up a Xero account
You need a Xero account first to be able to use the marketplace in Xero. If you don’t have an account at this moment, go to xero.com and create one.
If you already have an account, log in with your existing account to proceed with Facebook Xero integration and access customer data across both platforms.
2. Customize Facebook and Xero accounts
You have a Xero account now. Login with that and set up the application to suit your needs. You can either turn on the demo period by enabling ‘demo company’ or start using the free version with limited features.
Check your current level of scopes and features by taking a product tour. Similarly, set up your Facebook marketplace and change the necessary settings and triggers there.
3. Activate Xero API
When you use Xero’s open API for Xero integration with Facebook, you will be able to customize the integration between the applications the way you want.
As you have already logged into your account, connect to API explorer. You can also open the app launcher and see the list of applications available to connect to.
4. Select the data you want to send from one app to the other
Xero has more than the required customer data, but you don’t need all of them to send to the other person. Choose the customer information you want to be automatically synced when a customer makes a purchase through the Facebook store.
Look into what kind of data from Xero you need about a customer while selling to them on Facebook.
5. Select features as per your requirements
Do you just want to create an invoice, or do you want to create or update contacts as well? There are many features and triggers available to make this integration more useful.
Automate and manage spending more efficiently with proactive controls
Through Facebook Xero integration, you can make your employees' tasks more efficient and accurate. If there is one more place where you can use similar help, that’s your accounts payable.
If you are already using Xero to handle your company’s accounting records and customer payment details, we recommend you use Volopay for your expense management needs. Here is how it can further enhance the organization in your business accounting operations.
Volopay is a resourceful platform through which you can make all business payments online. As it connects with Xero API, you can sync the accounts payable instantaneously with your bank account and ledger. It doesn’t require you to manually label any payment line for future reference.
PPC ad expenses are a headache to the marketing and accounting departments as it’s a recurring expense. You can pay per your usage automatically every month with the help of the corporate cards of Volopay. What’s better is that you can have different cards for different campaigns.
Suggested read: Guide to marketing expense management using virtual cards
Volopay acts like an all-in-one platform to streamline your outgoing payments and store their records and related documents for as long as you need. You can look into it to categorize and understand where and how your money is spent.
Volopay has proved to be the most useful tool for many SMEs and throws out the manual tasks associated with accounting processes.