Invoicing and Xero
Invoices, bills and credit notes
From a project or the Finance tab:
- New invoice bills the client for receivable ledger lines; New bill records a vendor's invoice against payable lines. Lines can't be billed twice.
- Preview shows the document with your template before you issue it.
- Approve issues it. With Xero connected, it is posted to Xero automatically.
- Payments records a payment against an issued document; Credit note credits all or part of it.
Deposits and money on account
When a client pays before you invoice (a deposit), pays too much, or pays without saying which invoice it's for, record it on the client's page under Money on account → Record deposit: the amount, currency, date and their payment reference. Each gets a reference such as DEP-2026-00004.
To use it, open the invoice's Payments window: Use money on account offers that client's open amounts in the invoice's currency. Choose one and Apply; you can split one deposit across several invoices. If a payment made this way is later reversed, the money goes back on account. Refund… records money you returned to the client.
With Xero connected, applying money on account posts a payment to the invoice in Xero from the account you set as deposits under bank accounts. Record the deposit's arrival in Xero yourself, in that same account.
Finance also has statements per client and vendor, ageing, payment runs for supplier bills, saved views and CSV/XLSX export.
Legal entities and cost centres
Settings → Legal entities is for agencies that invoice from more than one company. Each entity has its own legal name, company and VAT numbers, address and bank details, and optionally a numbering prefix that gives it its own sequence (for example UK-INV-2026-00001 and DE-INV-2026-00001). One entity can be the default.
Settings → Cost centres lists where revenue and cost are reported (departments, offices, client programmes).
On a project's ledger, choose Invoice from (the entity) and Cost centre. New invoices, pro formas and bills for the project are issued from that entity, and ledger lines report to that cost centre; setting it also fills lines that don't have one yet. Credit notes follow their invoice. The Finance tab shows revenue, cost and margin by cost centre.
With Xero connected, set a Tracking category under account mapping (for example "Department") to send each line's cost centre to Xero. The category's options in Xero must have the same names as your cost centres. By default all entities post to the one connected Xero organisation. If an entity keeps its own books, use Settings → Separate Xero per legal entity → Connect own Xero: that entity's invoices, bills, credit notes and payments then post only to its own Xero (never to the default, even if its connection drops), with its own account mapping and bank accounts. Clients and vendors are matched to contacts separately in each Xero organisation.
Connecting Xero
You need finance permission (owner, admin or a finance role).
- Settings → Xero accounting → Connect Xero and sign in to Xero.
- Fill in Account mapping: the sales account code (for invoices) and the purchases account code (for supplier bills) are required, otherwise documents can't be posted. Tax types are optional.
- Under Bank accounts for payments, add the Xero bank account code for each currency you're paid in (and a "default" for the rest). Recorded payments then go to the right account without typing the code each time.
- Approve documents as usual. Each one is posted once, even if the connection drops and the post is retried. LanguageOps reuses an existing Xero contact with the same name or email instead of creating a duplicate. If several Xero contacts match, the document shows under Sync failed in the Reconciliation panel: click Search Xero, pick the right contact and Link. The client or vendor stays linked to that contact and the blocked documents are retried.
Nothing is sent to Xero automatically when you first connect.
Reconciliation
LanguageOps checks Xero every hour for changes and checks every open document overnight. The Reconciliation panel in Settings shows:
- how many documents are linked to Xero, when they were last checked, and any documents waiting to post or that failed to sync;
- issues to review, where Xero and LanguageOps disagree.
| Issue | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Total differs in Xero | The document was edited in Xero | Fix it in Xero (the issue closes itself), or mark it Expected |
| Currency or contact differs in Xero | Changed directly in Xero | As above |
| Voided or deleted in Xero | It no longer counts in Xero; LanguageOps marks it void | Confirm, then mark Resolved |
| Not found in Xero | Xero no longer returns it | Check access to the Xero organisation |
| Payment removed in Xero | A payment recorded here was deleted in Xero | Check with your bookkeeper |
The panel also lists invoices and bills from the last 90 days that are in Xero but not in LanguageOps (checked overnight): during a migration, that's what still lives only in your old system; afterwards, documents someone raised directly in Xero. They are listed only, never imported.
LanguageOps never changes an issued total to match Xero. Payments made directly in Xero, for example during bank reconciliation, are added to the document's payment history automatically.
Reconcile now runs a full check on demand. Disconnect stops posting and checking; links to documents already posted are kept, and reconnecting carries on.