Clients who are billed monthly have invoices generated in Xero which are posted automatically to XPM against a master job which we have called FPA (or Fixed Price Agreement).
These FPA jobs are “containers” into which all Xero bills are posted. Apart from additional projects beyond the FPA scope, all time for these clients are posted to the FPA job. No time is posted to the individual jobs (eg BAS). The time posted to out-of-scope jobs are billed separately as normal.
An FPA is created annually on 1st July or the anniversary of the job. 12 months of invoices are matched to the FPA after which the monthly invoices match to the new-year FPA.
The FPA will usually remain open for the 12 months of the financial year, plus another 5-6 months until the year’s tax is complete. At the point its closed. FPA clients will have two FPA jobs open during part of the year.
Once the final work for the FPA is complete, the WIP can be written off against the monthly invoices and the job closed.
Create a Fixed Price Agreement Job in XPM
This is the set up for a recurring FPA, set up to auto-create on the first of July each year. The {Year+1} code will create a job called “FPA 2018” on 1st July 2017.
If you need one for the current year, back date the start date to the first day of the current month. Then go edit the created job and change the name back to the current year eg FPA 2017.
If the client agreement includes a xero subscription, then the FPA job can be used to post regular Xero subscriptions as well as the monthly fees.
Create the client in Xero
If not set up already, create the client in Xero, exactly as in XPM. Add the address and Client Code and update the Primary contact to the billing name.
Create a Repeating Invoice in Xero
Accounts > Sales > New Repeating Invoice
Complete details as follows
NOTE: The Reference number is the FPA job number in XPM.
The Job Number in the reference is essential for the link between Xero and the FPA job to work.
Spilt the fees from the xero subscriptions if they are being billing on the same invoice.
Leave the End Date blank.
Invoice Dates are
Bunbury 2nd of Month
Bridgetown 3rd of Month
Boyup 4th of Month
This way it’s easier for each office to review and approve their invoices.
Save As Draft
There will be some invoices you are happy to auto-approve and have Xero send, but most will be Drafts to be checked before sending.
Notes
When doing Xero subs invoices, take care of the Tax Inclusive/Exclusive settings
It’s preferable to do inclusive as exclusive often comes up with rounding errors
Posting the invoice
Once approved in Xero, the invoice will be exported to XPM overnight. No manual entry in XPM is required.