To set up your default billing settings, check out our step-by-step guide on Configuring your Billing settings.

The below video also covers this step by step and walks you through the journey from Proposal to Xero invoice.

Recurring billing is a key part of Socket’s automation. To use this feature, go to the Billing section, where you’ll find all monthly recurring services ready for invoicing. One-off invoices are managed separately in the Work Management section.

In the Billing view, you can filter by Change Type to see changes since the previous month. This helps you quickly identify new clients or adjustments, such as services that have expanded or contracted.

You can compare this month’s bill amount with the previous month to see the value of any changes. You can also compare the Line Count for both months, which reflects the number of service lines on the invoice. To explore any invoices further, click on the relevant line to open the Client Details view, where you can review all the client information.

To preview an invoice, click the magnifying glass icon on each line. This allows you to confirm the details, including amounts, line items, and payment terms and gives you a visual representation of the invoice.

Check the Xero contact header for any warnings, as these indicate a mismatch between the contact name in Socket and in Xero.

You have two options:

1. Leave the warning as it is, and a new contact will be created using the name shown. This is useful if the contact is new and doesn’t already exist in Xero.

2. Click the warning sign to choose the corresponding name in Xero that you want to link to the Socket contact.

For example, if the name is slightly different – like CITY LIMO in Socket and City Limousines in Xero – you can select the matching Xero record to avoid creating a duplicate. In this case, I linked the Socket client to City Limousines, as it was the intended match.

You can review the Billing Plan at any point and it will stay in draft mode until you’re ready to approve it. To finalise, simply click 'Approve Plan' in the top right and the plan will update from [draft] to [finalised]. On the 1st of the month, Socket will then automatically send the related invoices to the draft section in Xero.

You can approve the Billing Plan in ahead of time, and it will only post to Xero on the 1st of the month. If you approve the plan after the 1st, the invoices will post within minutes, to Xero, provided they are for the billing month that has just ended.

To bill for any one-off work, head to Work Management.

This section displays all work that isn’t part of a recurring billing cycle, or 'on completion' work. To bill for this, simply click the relevant row and it will take you to the client’s detail view.

From here, you'll just need to 'Mark as Completed' any work items that are ready for invoicing. Once marked, Socket will automatically generate a draft invoice in Xero for those items. If there are multiple selected, that were part of the same proposal then these will be grouped together for invoicing.

Please note that you'll need to be out of Playground Mode to use the Billing functionality with Xero.

For any future accepted proposals, these will flow directly into future billing runs. This means there’s no need to manually adjust repeating invoices in Xero. Similarly, when a service is cancelled or modified, once the proposal has been adjusted, the changes are reflected in the next invoice automatically.