From XU Magazine, 
Issue 19

A real-time snapshot of your Xero accounts in Google Drive

This article originated from the Xero blog. The XU Hub is an independent news and media platform - for Xero users, by Xero users. Any content, imagery and associated links below are directly from Xero and not produced by the XU Hub.
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As a small business accountant, you want to keep an eye on your cash flow, and this is why you are using Xero. Also, you are using Google Docs to create, edit and share documents in your Google Drive. Companies of all sizes are switching from office suites that run on desktop computers to cloud business apps like G Suite. One of the best features of Google Docs and Sheets is the real-time commenting and collaboration.

Have you ever wondered how great it would be if you could just edit a Google spreadsheet and all the data would get synced up with Xero automatically? Wouldn’t it be great if you could save time on tedious manual tasks (downloading reports from Xero, exporting data into the spreadsheets, emailing reports, etc.) by easily automating these tasks in Google Sheets and instantly sharing real-time reports with your clients?

For example, you may want:

  • Use Google Data Studio to visualize the dynamics of the cash flow.
  • Automatically refresh these dynamics on the selected schedule.
  • Have a Google Spreadsheet with automatically updated reports, so you can share these reports with a third party without giving access to Xero account.
  • Download all Xero data into the spreadsheet for further analysis, custom reporting or sharing and collaboration in Google Drive.
  • Using a Google Spreadsheet as a data source for updating your Xero account – create invoices, transactions, purchase orders, contacts, etc.
  • Consolidate Xero data and reports across multiple Xero accounts.
  • Automatically generate and email reports to your clients in Google Sheets, Excel, CSV or PDF format.
  • Use all the amazing tools of Google Sheets to analyze, visualize, and get the most out of your data: pivot tables, charts, functions, macros, explore, etc.

To achieve all of this and a lot more, we have created the add-on for Google Spreadsheets, called G-Accon for Xero. This Google Sheets add-on turns your spreadsheets into a powerful web application.

The idea beyond the add-on is simple: we allow you to connect the Google Spreadsheet to one or more Xero accounts and sync it with Xero Accounting, Payroll, Assets, Projects data. You will be able to refresh the data manually or automatically using the flexible schedule. Bi-directional sync capabilities will allow you to make changes to Xero directly from spreadsheets.

Also, the add-on allows downloading reports – both pre-defined by Xero (Detailed Account Transactions, Account Transactions, Profit and Loss, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, etc.) and custom, created by G-Accon (Purchase Orders, Purchase Orders Summary, etc.).

Moreover, using  G-Accon for Xero, you will be able to seamlessly consolidate reports and data from multiple organizations,  so you can have the real-time global picture of all your accounts.

So, how it works?

  • After installing the add-on, you will be asked to login into your Xero account. On the successful login, Xero will call add-on back and provide a temporary authentication token, which will allow the add-on to execute requests on your behalf. In our code, we never have access to your password: all authentication provided by Xero itself. This is the standard and most popular protocol called OAuth (Open Authentication).
  • All further requests will be redirected by the add-on to our secure backend server. We utilize secured and reliable Amazon Web Services cloud platform, to provide the excellent Amazon out-of-the-box security and reliability.
  • From the back-end server, the request will be redirected to Xero, the response will be processed and returned back to the add-on.
  • As a final step, data will be formatted and displayed in your Google Spreadsheet.

G-Accon won Emerging App Partner of the Year award in Xero Americas Awards 2018. It’s becoming increasingly popular in Xero and G Suite app marketplaces.

With G-Accon you will save hours by doing Xero data loads, queries, reports, mass updates and inserts not from Xero, but directly from your Google Spreadsheets.

Why leave it there?

Find out more

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