Sections In This Article
Contact Records in Xero
Contact records in Xero can have a number of different fields, but only two fields are important when integrating Xero with Relay for the purpose of bill payments:
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“Contact Name”
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“Email”
Every bill in Xero belongs to a contact record. Every contact record will at a minimum contain a “Contact Name” field. However, not all contact records will contain the “Email” field. For more information, please refer to Xero’s documentation regarding contacts in Xero.
Payee Records in Relay
Payee records in Relay store the payment information of your payees. This typically includes the payee’s account and routing numbers, as well as two other fields:
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“Name”
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“Email”
These two fields in Relay’s payee record correspond to the two fields in Xero’s contact record listed in the above section.
How Contacts get Imported from Xero to Relay
When you sync your Xero bills with Relay using the Bill Pay integration, Relay automatically imports the bills as well as the contact records in Xero that are associated with each imported bill.
Here’s how this information passes from Xero to Relay:
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The contact name in Xero becomes the payee name in Relay.
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If the contact record in Xero has an email address, the email address will be associated with the payee record in Relay.
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Any outstanding approved bills associated with the contact will show up as “Unpaid Bills” in Relay.
When a Xero contact is synced with Relay for the first time, a new payee record is created in Relay.
This occurs even if a payee record in your Relay account already exists and shares the same name as the contact record in Xero. As a result, it is possible to end up with duplicate payee records in your Relay account after syncing with Xero. This is a concern only if you previously created payee records in Relay, and later those same records were also added after a sync with Xero.
For more information about duplicate records, please refer to the following support documentation:
Importing New Payees from Xero
To import contact records from Xero to Relay, first make sure that the contact record in Xero has an approved but outstanding bill associated with it. Then, follow these steps:
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Open the Settings tab, select the Integrations panel, and locate the “Bill pay” section.
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If you are syncing your Xero bills for the first time, click Connect, otherwise click Edit.
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You have two options for how to import bills and contacts from Xero to Relay:
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If you choose to Automatically import unpaid bills and associated payees, every time you approve a bill in Xero, both the bill and the contact record will be imported into Relay as a bill and a payee record. This rule will apply to every single contact record in Xero.
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If you choose to Manually select payees to import their associated unpaid bills, you will be able to choose which contact records in Xero will have their outstanding bills imported into Relay. (Please note that if you choose a contact that has no outstanding bills in Xero, that contact will not be imported.)
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Click Save to update your settings and initiate a sync between Xero and Relay.
After you have synced your contact records from Xero, they will become payee records in Relay.
You can find your synced records by clicking the Payments tab > selecting the Manage panel > and clicking Payee.
From the payee list, find your synced payee record. It will have the same name as the contact record in Xero, so you can use the search function to locate it. Click on the payee record, and a modal will appear on the right-hand side. Click Edit.
In the modal, scroll all the way down to the bottom. You should see a message confirming that “This payee is synced from Xero. To delete this payee, you can unsync it from the integration tab in settings”.
That’s it, you have successfully synced your contact record from Xero to Relay.
Since Xero contact records do not contain payment information, you will still need to update the payment information for these payee records in Relay. You can do this by either manually entering the payment information or by requesting the payee to provide their payment information to you.
For more information about getting payment information, please consult the following support articles:
Things to Know
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Every bill in Xero has a contact record associated with it.
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Contact records in Xero become payee records in Relay only if an outstanding bill is synced with Relay. If the contact record in Xero has no outstanding bills, it will not be imported into Relay.
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Contact records in Xero may not store payment information such as account or routing numbers. If this is the case, payment details can be entered into Relay or collected using Relay’s requesting payment information feature.
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A contact record in Xero does not need to have an email address in order to be imported into Relay, a contact name is sufficient.