Connect Stripe to Xero

What This Integration Does

This integration creates invoices in Xero automatically every time a payment completes in Stripe. When a customer pays — whether it is a one-off charge, a subscription renewal, or an overage fee — the system creates a corresponding invoice in Xero, matches it to the correct contact, applies the right revenue account code, and marks it as paid. Refunds flow the opposite direction, generating credit notes in Xero that keep the books balanced without anyone touching the accounting system.

The result is an accounting ledger that stays in lockstep with your payment processor. No more exporting Stripe payouts as CSVs. No more manually creating invoices days after the money has landed. Revenue is categorised, tax is calculated, and bank reconciliation data is ready the moment a transaction happens.

The Workflow

When Stripe fires a payment_intent.succeeded webhook, the integration receives it and begins building the Xero transaction. First, it looks up the Stripe customer and checks whether a matching contact already exists in Xero. If the contact exists, the invoice is attached to them. If not, the system creates a new Xero contact using the customer’s name, email, and billing address from Stripe, then proceeds.

The invoice itself is built from the Stripe charge metadata. Each line item on the Stripe invoice becomes a line item on the Xero invoice, mapped to the correct Xero account code based on rules you define during setup. A SaaS subscription renewal might map to a “Recurring Revenue” account. A one-time setup fee might map to “Professional Services.” Multi-currency transactions carry the original currency through to Xero with the exchange rate recorded at the time of payment. The Xero invoice is created with a status of “Authorised” and a payment applied against it, so it appears as fully settled from the moment it lands.

Refunds follow the same path in reverse. When Stripe processes a full or partial refund, the integration creates a credit note in Xero linked to the original invoice. Partial refunds generate a credit note for the refunded amount only. This keeps the Xero ledger accurate without anyone needing to reconcile the difference manually.

Failed payments are handled too. When a subscription payment fails and Stripe retries, the system waits for the final outcome before writing anything to Xero. You do not end up with phantom invoices for payments that never completed.

Before and After

Before: At the end of each month, someone downloads the Stripe payout report, cross-references it against customer records, and manually creates invoices in Xero. This takes anywhere from a few hours for a small operation to several days for a business processing hundreds of transactions. Mistakes creep in — wrong account codes, missed refunds, duplicated entries when a payout spans a month boundary. Bank reconciliation becomes a puzzle that eats into the first week of every new month, and the management accounts are never ready when they should be.

After: Invoices appear in Xero within seconds of payment. Every transaction is categorised, every refund is recorded, and every customer contact is up to date. Bank reconciliation becomes a matter of matching Stripe payouts against a ledger that already contains every underlying transaction. Month-end accounting closes on day one instead of day five. Your finance team works with accurate numbers from the start of every reporting period.

Who Needs This

This integration is built for businesses that collect payments through Stripe and use Xero as their accounting system — typically SaaS companies, digital agencies, or subscription-based service providers processing between fifty and several thousand transactions per month. The trigger is usually the same: the monthly reconciliation process has become painful enough that someone is spending real time on data entry that should not exist. If your Stripe dashboard and your Xero ledger tell different stories, and someone has to manually bring them into agreement every month, this integration eliminates that work entirely.

How We Build This

We build this as a custom API integration using Stripe’s webhook system and Xero’s OAuth 2.0 API — not a Zapier automation or a third-party connector with per-transaction fees. The integration runs inside your application with full control over customer matching logic, account code mapping, multi-currency handling, and error recovery. Webhook events are processed through a queue with retry logic, so a temporary Xero API outage does not lose transactions. We handle Xero’s OAuth token refresh cycle automatically, and every transaction is logged for audit purposes. For full details on what each platform’s API provides, see our Stripe API and Xero API pages.

Get Stripe and Xero Connected

If your finance team is spending hours reconciling Stripe payments against Xero every month, that time is recoverable. We build the integration, map your revenue accounts, and hand you a system where the books update themselves. Get in touch to scope the connection.