The Benefit of Accounting Automation with Xero & Salesforce Integration

If you’re wondering whether or not Xero-to-Salesforce integration is possible, the short answer is that it is.

But the degree to which these two systems can be linked together is quite astounding when looked at in detail.

In this post, we’ll cover the benefits of linking Salesforce to Xero and how the procedure could save you money and time.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is one of the first Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools to hit the market.

A CRM is a tool or suite of tools which allows you to track customers, leads, follow-ups, sales, income — basically anything related to your company’s relationship with your customers, or potential customers.

Salesforce is one of the big hitters in the CRM sphere, and the company boasted over 19 per cent of the CRM market share as of 2019. It was a pioneer and vanguard in the “End of Software” mindset, and was decades ahead of its time in embracing the idea that tools could be run on the internet, in a browser, instead of installed on a local computer.

There are a number of modules which can be added to Salesforce to increase its effectiveness and unique offering for your specific company.

One of those modules is called the “Commerce Cloud Module”.

The Salesforce Commerce Cloud Module is a platform for online companies. It possesses many top features for eCommerce platforms and is used by such giants as Adidas and Puma.

Why integrate Salesforce to Xero?

Just as Salesforce was revolutionary for software itself, so have online accounting platforms been revolutionary for the subject of accounting.

Gone are the days of the “Excel Shoebox” where any and every receipt is logged into a massive spreadsheet, only to confuse us at the end of the year.

Software such as Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and others offer such advanced tools for business accounting that even the smallest businesses can boast expert accounting without needing to pay exorbitant fees for it.

What makes Xero such an excellent choice for Salesforce users is that it integrates so deeply into the Salesforce CRM.

Another key module of Salesforce is one called Pardot.

Pardot offers “email automation, targeted email campaigns and lead management for B2B sales and marketing organizations” (source).

Pardot integrates completely with Xero.

Every time you make a sale in your eCommerce platform, it then gets recorded in Salesforce. This event can then trigger a multiple set of actions in Xero, obviating the need for manual data entry.

These automated actions can include:

• Invoice generated in Xero automatically for new sales and refunds.
• Recording of sales for recurring subscriptions.
• If you are dealing with partners and have partner communities configured in Salesforce whom you need to make payments for, you can set up triggers so that partners can upload their respective invoices in their partner communities. These invoices will then automatically be set alongside their respective purchase-ledgers accounts in Xero.
• And so on.

The time-savings are staggering.

The benefit of accounting automation

Time is money. That’s the first reason accounting-automation software is an absolute must for any business, of any size.

The automation of accounting processes has come a tremendously long way compared to the early days when the only tools accountants had was Excel or some other spreadsheet program.

These days, automation in finance and accounting is ubiquitous: Everything from automated bookkeeping to invoicing automation software and payment automation.

There are so many choices of good software out there that the idea of not automating your accounting and bookkeeping procedures has become obsolete.

A word of caution regarding Xero reporting

It is our experience that although Xero’s reporting features are robust, there are even better ones out there.

If you want to have a high-level, in-depth analysis of your business, then we’d recommend integrating all your systems and apps together into one dashboard for real-time data which should include qualitative and quantitative values (such as certain KPI’s etc.).

What about linking to other online accounting tools?

Using something like Zapier, it is possible to link Salesforce to a plethora of online accounting tools, as well as to other online tools.

Salesforce has been around a long time, and they are pioneers in the “world without software” movement. They are constantly adding features to ensure that Salesforce continues to work and coexist well with other cloud tools.

Even if you’re using a tool which currently cannot integrate into Salesforce, it’s highly likely that the feature will be added (or facilitated by a third-party solution such as Zapier) sometime in the near future.

Integration is the name of the game. The more you can automate manual data entry procedures in your business, the more time you’ll have for important tasks such as marketing and promotion.

Or simply more time off, which we feel is a valuable goal for any successful business person!