Unleash Financial Insights with Xero Data
Tired of time-consuming tasks and manual data entry? Your time and money are better spent on efforts to grow your business. With Xero online accounting software, you can get beautiful views of where your cash is going and put time-consuming tasks on automatic. Xero is built for small businesses for managing financial data with invoicing, bank reconciliation, inventory, sales, expenses, bookkeeping, and more.
Why use Xero?
Xero allows you to manage all your finances in the cloud. You can log into software and check the health of your organization anywhere, anytime, on your Mac, PC, tablet, or phone to get awesome views of your cash flow. Xero accounting software takes its information directly from your online banking accounts so you never make a mistake typing in the numbers-it’s much more accurate. It also allows you to get paid faster through online invoices for your customers and be updated when they’re opened.
Bold BI allows you to extract financial patterns from Xero analytics data so you can keep an eye on your finances and stay on top of your company’s interests.
In this blog post, we are going to explore the following topics:
- Connecting Xero data with Bold BI.
- Creating a financial dashboard with Xero data.
We’ll track key accounting metrics through a dashboard that gives you a clear view and understanding of your business’s financial health.
Connecting Xero data with Bold BI
You can connect to Xero data with Bold BI in the following ways:
- Connect with direct Xero data connector.
- Connect with Xero data connector through CData Connect Cloud.
Let’s see how to create a Xero data source using Bold BI with a direct Xero data connection.
1. Connecting with direct Xero data connector using Bold BI
To create the direct Xero data source connectivity from the dashboard designer, follow the steps explained on this page. Also, use the steps in this documentation to authenticate with Xero web service.
After successful authentication, the NEW DATA SOURCE configuration panel opens, as shown in the following image.
- Specify a unique name for the Xero data source and provide a description (optional).
- Choose your Organization from the drop-down list.
- Select Resources from the drop-down list. The corresponding URL will be displayed in the URL text box. If you want to connect with other endpoints, you can enable the Custom Urlcheck box and provide the URL in the text box manually.
- Enter xero-tenant-id in the header panel by selecting ADD above the header, if you selected the Custom Url check box.
- Leave the default value GET for the REST API under Method.
- Set a time interval for Refresh Settings so that the dashboard can refresh itself with the latest data updates.
- Set the data format to be JSONsince all the REST API endpoints return results in JSON format.
- Xero will be set automatically in the Authentication Type section since OAuth is used for authenticating with a Xero account.
9. Select Preview & Connect to connect with the configurations set. Drag and drop the table and save the Xero data source.
Now let’s see how to create a Xero data source using the CData Connect Cloud connector in Bold BI.
2. Connecting with Xero data connector through CData Connect Cloud connector using Bold BI
To connect with the Xero data connector through the CData Connect Cloud, you will need to create a OAuth2.0 app first. Each app is assigned a unique client ID and client secret that will be used in the OAuth flow.
Set OAuth 2.0 redirect URI to https://oauth.cdata.com/oauth/ in your app. You can then log in and connect your app in the CData Connect Cloud.
Now let’s see how to connect Xero data through the CData Connect Cloud connector. This will allow you to create a virtual database for all supported connectors and make it available as a standard SQL interface. Refer to this blog post for more details about CData Connect Cloud connector integration with Bold BI.
Creating a virtual database for the Xero data source in CData Connect Cloud
In your CData Connect Cloud, select the Xero data source.
In the Settings tab, choose the schema you want to visualize in your dashboard.
In the Advanced tab, set the OAuth Client ID and OAuth Client Secret properties to successfully launch the OAuth flow. Verify that OAUTH2 is selected for the Xero App Authentication property, as shown in the following.
Once you have set the properties in the Advanced tab, navigate to the Settings tab and click Reset Database to prompt the OAuth flow.
This will prompt you to log in to your Xero account through the browser. When you do so, the necessary OAuth credentials will be generated and applied to the created database.
After you have followed these steps, you should receive a ‘Success!’ message in Connect Cloud. Once you receive this, click Save Changes to save the generated OAuth credentials to the created database to maintain connectivity.
The created database will be listed under databases like the following.
Once you’ve saved the Xero virtual database, you are ready to connect to Bold BI with the CData endpoint.
Creating Xero data source through CData using Bold BI dashboard
To create a Xero data source through CData, select CData from the data source list and fill in the required details.
Click Connect to connect with the configuration set. Drag and drop the table and save the CData Xero data source.
You can create a Xero data source in the two ways I’ve explained. The created data source will be added to the DATA SOURCES panel.
Once the data source is created, add the required widgets to your dashboard and connect data to them to visualize your metrics.
Creating a financial dashboard with Xero data
Let’s visualize key accounting metrics with Xero analytics data using a Bold BI dashboard through a CData connection.
Refer to the following Xero online accounting dashboard.
- Accounts receivable
- Accounts payable
- Due vs. overdue receivable
- Due vs. overdue payable
- Income and expenses
- Overdue amount
- Invoices overdue
- Accounts payable and receivable by month
- Profit and loss summary
- Invoices by status
- Expenses breakdown
- Executive summary
- Invoices due details by customer
This Xero online accounting dashboard focuses on tracking the financial data of a company through the following metrics:
The Xero online accounting dashboard is useful to business owners, bookkeepers, and accountants for keeping track of what is happening in their business. To learn more about the metrics and KPIs used in this dashboard example, refer to the Online Accounting Dashboard demo.
Conclusion
We hope this blog post provides needed information about Xero and guides you in connecting to Xero data in a Bold BI dashboard. If you have any questions on this blog, please feel free to post them in the following comment section. To get started with Bold BI, please request a free 30-minute demo with our experts to discuss creating dashboards and any other features you would like to learn more about. You can also contact us by submitting your questions through the Bold BI website or, if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support question.
Originally published at https://www.boldbi.com on February 27, 2020.
