Connect your accounting software

If your organisation uses Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting, Sage 200 or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can connect it to SupplierVault. Every morning SupplierVault reads your supplier bills and credit notes and adds each one to the matching supplier. Spend, the payment reports and the Procurement Act payment figures then fill themselves in, and nobody has to type invoices twice.

Every connection is read only. SupplierVault never adds, changes or deletes anything in your accounts, never reads bank details and never moves money.

Where to find it

Account button (top right) › Organisation › Accounting software. The section fills in a moment after the tab opens. There is one box for each system: Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Sage 200.

Only admins see this section. Only admins can connect, read, change the choices, check matches or disconnect. Only admins can link a supplier to your accounts: anyone else who tries sees "Only an admin can link a supplier to the accounting software. An admin can do it in Check matches."

Which plan includes it

Every plan, including Essentials and the free month. When a trial or plan ends and your organisation becomes read-only:

• the morning read skips your organisation;
• "Read now", saving choices, changes in Check matches and changing company are refused with "Your plan has ended, so SupplierVault can't read your accounts or change these choices. Renew your plan to carry on.";
• each connection's box still shows its status, and bills already read stay.

Everything starts again when the plan is renewed. See Plans and billing.

The five systems at a glance

Bank details are never read from any of them.

How to connect

1. Select Connect Xero, Connect QuickBooks, Connect Sage, Connect Business Central or Connect Sage 200.
2. The system's own sign-in page opens. Sign in, choose what to connect (see the table below) and allow access.
3. You're brought back to SupplierVault, for example "Sage 200 is connected (Acme Ltd). Reading your bills now…". The first read starts straight away.

The box then shows "Connected to name." and when it last read, for example "Last read 24 Oct, 06:45: 12 new, 3 updated."

The connection has to be finished within 15 minutes, by the same admin who started it. If a read is running when you come back, you'll see, for example, "A read from Sage is running. Wait a few minutes, then press Connect Sage again."

Changing the business, company or organisation

When you pick another one under Organisation, Business or Company to read, you'll see, for example, "Sage now reads Acme Trading. Press "Read from Sage now" to read its bills." Connecting a different one has the same effect.

• Bills already read stay on each supplier.
• The next read starts afresh for the new one, from your Read from date.
• Links belong to one company. Accounting systems reuse contact numbers between companies, so a supplier's link only counts in the company or organisation it was made in. In the new one, contacts are matched by name again, or you link them in Check matches.
• Your hand-made choices about contacts are cleared: contacts you unlinked by hand, and left-out contacts picked from the list. Names you typed into Leave out of spend are kept, and so are the other choices.
• Switch back to the first one and its links work again.
• It can't be done while a read is running ("A read is already running. Try again in a few minutes.").

What's read, and when

• Supplier bills: the bill number, bill date, due date, amount before VAT, VAT, currency, and whether and when it was paid.
• Supplier credit notes (QuickBooks calls them vendor credits, Business Central credit memos).
• Never bank details, payments out, sales invoices, or anything else in your accounts. Nothing is ever written back.
• The first read takes bills and credit notes dated from your Read from date (two years ago unless you change it). After that, each read takes the ones that are new or changed since the last read.
• Every morning, early (Xero at 5:45 UTC, the others at 5:50 UTC).
• Whenever you like: select Read from Xero now (or Read from QuickBooks now, Read from Sage now, Read from Business Central now, Read from Sage 200 now), for example after a payment run. You'll see, for example, "Read from Sage 200: 4 new bills, 2 updated." You can do this once a minute.
• One read at a time for each connection. If a read is running, the box shows "Reading now…" and pressing Read now gives "A read is already running. Try again in a few minutes." If the morning read finds one running, it skips that day.
• A very large read stops after about 5,000 bills and shows "More to read: it carries on next time." The next read picks up where it stopped, and reads the credit notes once the bills are done.

What each bill becomes

Each bill becomes an invoice on the matching supplier, with a small From Xero, From QuickBooks, From Sage, From Business Central or From Sage 200 tag on the supplier record and in the invoice register.

"Never counted" means voided, deleted and left-out bills stay on the supplier for the record, but they aren't in spend, the reports, the Dashboard's attention list, the disputed and on-hold counts or invoice accuracy.

If a bill changes, the next read updates it. A status you've set yourself, such as "Matched to PO", is kept until the bill is paid or voided. Each read that adds or changes something writes a line in the audit trail, for example "Sage 200 sync: 12 new bills, 3 updated (2 credit notes), 2 suppliers linked to their Sage 200 supplier".

How bills are matched to suppliers

Xero and Sage Accounting call a supplier a "contact". QuickBooks and Business Central call it a "vendor". Sage 200 calls it a "supplier". This page says "contact" for all of them. Matching works the same way for every system, and for credit notes as well as bills:

1. If one of your suppliers is already linked to the contact in this company or organisation, the bill goes to that supplier.
2. Otherwise SupplierVault compares the contact's name with each supplier's name and its legal name (in its payment details). Capitals, punctuation and the words Ltd, Limited, plc, LLP, Inc, UK, The, Group and Co are ignored, so "ACME Cleaning Ltd" matches "Acme Cleaning".
3. When a name matches exactly one supplier, that supplier is linked to the contact and the link is remembered.

• If a name matches more than one supplier, SupplierVault never guesses. It's listed as "name (matches more than one supplier)" and its bills aren't read until you link it in Check matches.
• Bills from contacts that don't match aren't read. The box lists them, for example "3 QuickBooks vendors don't match a supplier yet: … Give the supplier the same name, or add the legal name to its payment details, and it links next time."
• When one of them matches later, because you added, renamed or linked a supplier, the next read fetches all of its bills and credit notes from your Read from date.
• Example suppliers are never matched.

Check matches

Select Check matches in a connection's box to see every contact read so far (up to 1,000), with the supplier its bills go to, "Not linked", "Not linked (unlinked by hand)" or "Left out of spend". Type in Find a contact to narrow the list. For each contact you can:

Links take effect at the next read. Press "Read from … now" if you don't want to wait for the morning. Closed suppliers aren't offered in the supplier list.

A supplier record can open this screen too: see What happens if nothing is linked.

Choose what to read

Each connection has its own choices. The box shows them in one line, for example "Reading bills from 1 Nov 2024 · supplier details: on · unmatched: listed · 3 contacts left out". Select Choose what to read to change them, then Save choices. Each change is recorded in the audit trail.

What you'll see when you save:

• Usually: "Xero choices saved. They apply from the next read."
• Read from moved earlier after reads have run: "… choices saved. The next read goes back to date." That next read goes back to the new date once; later reads pick up changes only. Moving the date later doesn't remove bills already read.
• Supplier details just switched on: "… choices saved. Reading now to fill in missing supplier details…", then "Details filled in for n suppliers." It covers suppliers with new bills and any other linked supplier still missing details, up to 30 a read (40 for Xero); the rest follow on later reads. Each contact is looked up once.
• Leave out of spend changed: bills already read from those contacts are marked straight away, and the message adds, for example, "14 bills already read were updated." Taking a contact off the list clears the mark.

• New suppliers count towards your plan's supplier limit. At most 50 are created in one read. At the limit SupplierVault stops, and the box says "Not every new supplier was created" with the plan message. The rest stay listed.
• Some bills read before SupplierVault started recording which contact they came from can't be marked straight away. They're marked the next time they change in your accounts.
• Under the connection, "At the last read:" sums up what happened, for example "2 suppliers created in onboarding, details filled in for 3 suppliers, 14 bills left out of spend."

Bills held when bank details aren't verified

A bill that isn't paid yet, for a supplier whose bank details aren't verified in SupplierVault (penny test passed and call-back done), comes in as On hold with a note such as "From Sage 200. Bank details not verified in SupplierVault". This flags it to Finance before the payment run. When the penny test and call-back are recorded, held invoices are released as usual. Credit notes are never held. See Bank details and fraud checks.

What happens if nothing is linked

No accounting software connected

SupplierVault works fully without a connection. Spend then comes from:

• invoices entered by hand on the supplier, imported, read from an uploaded invoice by the invoice reader, or added through the API; and
• purchase requests that have been ordered (or received) but not yet invoiced.

Committed spend is the contract value you enter on each supplier. If no invoices or orders have been recorded in the last 12 months, the Dashboard shows contract commitments instead of actual spend.

Connected, but a supplier isn't linked

Nothing breaks. That supplier simply gets no bills from your accounts. Its spend comes only from invoices entered by hand (or read from an uploaded invoice) and its ordered purchase requests, as before.

On the supplier's Contract and money tab, admins see: "Not linked to your accounting software, so no bills are read for this supplier. Its spend comes from invoices entered here and ordered purchase requests." Select Check matches next to it to open the Check matches list and link it. The note only shows when your organisation has at least one connection and the supplier isn't linked to any of them. Example suppliers never show it.

After you disconnect

Bills already read stay on each supplier and still count. No new bills are read. See Disconnecting.

How the figures use the bills

Bills read from your accounts are ordinary invoices on the supplier, so every figure uses them like any other invoice. Credit notes count as negative amounts, so they net off.

• Voided, cancelled, deleted and left-out bills are never counted, and nor are rejected invoices. Every other status counts, including On hold.
• Amounts are converted to your reporting currency using the daily exchange rates, or a rate Finance has fixed in Settings › Exchange rates.
• An ordered purchase request drops out once an invoice for the same supplier carries the same PO number, so nothing is counted twice.
• Share of spend, the "▲ Concentration" flag (40% or more of the total) and tail spend in category plans all come from actual spend.
• The Payment practices report uses paid bills: days from the received date (the bill date unless you recorded one) to the paid date, and invoices not paid within agreed terms.
• The Procurement Act Payments compliance notice counts from the received date (the bill date unless you recorded one) and uses the due date. Payments over £30,000 uses the paid date and the VAT.
• Credit notes are never payments, so the three payment-timing reports (Payment practices, Payments compliance notice and Payments over £30,000) leave them out, along with bills settled wholly by a credit note in Xero or QuickBooks. Invoice accuracy and the disputed and on-hold counts leave credit notes out too.

Example: in the last year, Xero has three bills from Acme Cleaning for £2,000 each before VAT, a fourth that was voided, and a £300 credit note. A purchase request for £500 was ordered and not yet billed. Actual spend = £2,000 × 3 − £300 + £500 = £6,200. The voided bill is shown on the supplier but isn't counted.

The full list of formulas is in How figures are calculated.

Disconnecting

Select Disconnect, then click again to confirm. You'll see, for example, "Business Central disconnected. Bills already read stay on each supplier." The disconnection is recorded in the audit trail.

• SupplierVault deletes its stored connection, and with it that connection's choices (Read from, supplier details, unmatched contacts, Leave out of spend and the contacts you unlinked).
• Xero, QuickBooks, Sage Accounting and Sage 200 are asked to remove SupplierVault's access. Microsoft gives apps no way to do this for Business Central, so deleting the connection is what ends access. Your Microsoft admin can also remove the app from your Microsoft 365 organisation.
• Suppliers keep their links. They work again if you connect the same company or organisation again, and bills already read are then updated, not added twice.

If something goes wrong

A problem with the last read shows in red under the connection, starting "Problem:".

Good to know

• Don't also log the same bills by hand, or they'll be counted twice. The same goes for connecting two systems that hold the same bills.
• You can connect one of each system to each SupplierVault organisation, reading one organisation, business or company at a time.
• If a bill is settled only by setting a credit note against it, your accounts show it as paid, so SupplierVault does too. For Xero and QuickBooks it's marked as settled by a credit note and left out of the payment-timing reports, because nothing was actually paid. The other systems don't say how a bill was settled, so there it counts as paid on the date the accounts show.
• QuickBooks only reports deleted bills and credits for about 30 days. If SupplierVault hasn't read QuickBooks for that long, for example while your plan has ended, deletions in that gap aren't picked up.
• Business Central: if your Microsoft 365 organisation doesn't let staff approve apps themselves, your Microsoft admin needs to approve SupplierVault once.
• For other finance systems, use the API (Enterprise plan).
• The access keys for each connection are stored securely on our servers and never shown in the app.

Related

• Connect Xero
• Payments, invoices and bank checks
• Bank details and fraud checks
• Spend, usage and licences
• How figures are calculated
• Procurement Act 2023 for public bodies
• Security and your data