If you use Xero for your practice and want to manage you billing through Socket then why not leverage our Xero integration to make this effortless.

Don't forget to check our Xero guide on how to configure the integration, which includes picking the sales account codes in Xero you want applied to invoices, for both recurring and one-off billing.

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

The billing settings can be found in Settings > Practice Settings > Billing. These are your practice wide default settings.

Set your default invoice date here, this is the date that will be set as the invoice date when it reaches Xero. Select your Payment terms next to apply this to the due date of your invoice in Xero.

Clients can customise the level of detail shown on their invoices based on their preferences. By default, each service appears as its own line item on Xero invoices. However, you can change this by toggling the setting to YES to consolidate all services into a single line. This setting can be applied separately for both:

• Recurring Services

• One-off Services

You can also choose how alignment fees are invoiced. These fees can either:

• Be included on a separate invoice, or

• Be added to the first monthly invoice.

Now you've configured your default Billing Settings, you can override some of these on a client by client basis. Head to the client record and select the “Invoicing “ tab.

The first few settings will look familiar and behave in the same way as explained above. Note there is an additional setting at the bottom of this screen:

Invoice Template Branding Theme

Here you can select different branding themes for clients if you are using this functionality within Xero. For example, you might have a special invoice template for clients on direct debit versus those who pay via bank transfer.

You can absolutely still benefit from the Billing feature in Socket, even if you aren't using Xero. You can easily export the billing data to Excel for use in other systems.

You have two export options for your invoices:

Billing Plan (how you see it in grid format)

Service Analysis (detailed per service)

These exports can help in creating custom reports or give you the invoice data needed to integrate with other accounting systems.