eBay Xero integration that keeps your books in step with your stock

Each eBay order becomes one draft invoice in Xero: the buyer matched or created as a contact by name and email, one line per item at the price actually paid, and the order’s own currency. It lands as a draft so you approve it in Xero the way you approve anything else; nothing is posted to your accounts behind your back.

eBay does not announce a sale, so we find it on our next check, up to two minutes later, and the draft invoice follows straight after. Cancel the order before you approve the invoice and the draft is removed. Anything you have already approved is yours to credit in Xero.

Invoices work from the first connection. Stock does not move until you switch on Track inventory in QuickSync’s Xero settings and pick three accounts from your chart of accounts: an inventory asset account, a cost of goods sold account and an inventory adjustment account. From then on a eBay sale takes one off the tracked Xero item, and each change we write arrives as a bill or credit note against a QuickSync Inventory Adjustment contact, because that is how Xero moves a tracked quantity.

Nothing sells in Xero, so there is no sale there for us to hear about. What can change in Xero is the quantity itself, and Xero does not tell us when it does; we check every two minutes and send the new figure on to eBay. eBay’s 50-character SKU shortens to the 30 Xero accepts as an item code on the way in, so codes that only differ after character thirty collide.