How to connect to your Xero company

When you create a new Brixx forecast, you can choose to connect to your Xero company at the same time.

Note: Brixx can work completely independently of Xero if you wish.

Connecting will give you a starting point that reflects your Xero chart of accounts. This means that components will be created that are named after your revenue accounts, expense accounts etc.

 

You’ll also go through matching your chart of accounts to Brixx report headings. The matching you do will define where Xero actual figures will appear in actuals vs forecast reports.

Once you’ve connected your company it follows these steps:

1. Connect to a Xero company
2. Choose your plan settings
3. Match your Profit & Loss Accounts
4. Match your Balance Sheet Accounts

 

Connect to a Xero company
 

From your ‘Plans’ area create a new plan. From the choices available to you on the new plan form, click the 'Start your plan from Xero' button.

This will take you to Xero and ask that you sign in to your Xero account. Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be able to choose any of your companies to connect to.

 

When you have chosen a company to connect to, you’ll be taken back to Brixx. 

Here you’ll see all the companies you’ve connected to Xero with. If you only have one, you can proceed with that company selected to the next step.

If you have multiple companies connected, you’ll need to choose which one to proceed with for this forecast. If you want to create multiple Brixx plans for different companies (or multiple Brixx plans for the same company) you can create a new plan again.

Once a Xero company has been connected, it will stay on this screen for future plans.

 

Choose your plan settings

Among the usual plan options, you will now be able to select "Fill your forecast by extrapolating Xero historical data".

If this option is left off, your forecast will start as a blank canvas for you to enter forecast data once your plan is created.

Turning this option on will give you some starting forecast data to work with for your revenue and expenses.

The default option here is to reference the previous 12 months of data in your Xero accounts and replicate that in the future periods of the plan. You can adjust this up or down by entering a positive or negative % figure into the adjustment column.

This is intended to be a simple starting point for your forecast that will save you some data entry in. However, you shouldn’t rely on this for decision making until you’ve spent time making more precise adjustments after plan creation.

 

Profit & loss matching

On this screen, you’ll see a list of your revenue and expense accounts matched up to the headings from the standard Brixx Profit & Loss report.

Each separate box has a heading which you’ll find on the Brixx report. Your Xero accounts will have been placed under these headings using a set of default placement rules.

You can move any account by clicking the move icon on the right end of the row. This provides a list menu of all the headings for you to choose from.

 

Balance Sheet matching

This screen works in exactly the same way as the previous Profit & Loss screen. This time you are dealing with your Asset, Liability and Equity accounts.

 

Notes about subheadings on the matching screens:

On both screens some headings are further split into subheadings. For example, the Balance Sheet splits Assets into Asset type and Accumulated Depreciation.

This is a further level of classification used to order your results coherently in reports. It also plays a role in the available matching options inside specific types of components.

For example, the Asset component outputs all calculations related to the purchase, value, depreciation and sales of assets. It will match up these outputs against multiple Xero accounts.