Good to know before you get going with Xero and Modulr.
Key info for Xero users
Payments created before connecting to Xero
Only Xero payments that are created against a Bill after connecting your Modulr and Xero accounts, will be synced on both platforms thereafter.
If there were any payments created against Bills before the connection was established however, these payments will not appear in your Modulr account.
Managing multiple Xero accounts with one Modulr account
We currently do not support connecting multiple Xero accounts to one single Modulr account.
If you need to connect to a different Modulr account, please log in to the currently connected Modulr account and disconnect your Xero organisation. You can then try to connect on the new Modulr account again.
Payment references
In some instances you may notice your payment reference looks different than the payment reference you entered in Xero. The reference may have MOD followed by a date in the format YYYYMMDD. This is because the Modulr payments platform requires payments to have a minimum reference length of 6 characters, whereas Xero requires a minimum of 5.
If a payment sent from Xero to Modulr has a reference of 5 characters or less, the Modulr portal will automatically add the suffix MODYYYYMMDD to the reference. The date shown will be the date the payment is sent from Xero to Modulr. This does not impact the payment itself, payments will still process successfully.
Rate limits
Xero sets limits on the number of API requests that Modulr can make for a given customer per minute and per day. This means if you make too many payments or payruns, or try too many times to retry a failed payment or payrun, you could use up your daily request allowance and lock yourself out of using Xero via Modulr for that day.
If you are running a large number of payments (more than 1000) on the same day and experience a disruption to your service, contact Modulr customer support in the first instance. It may be the case that you have reached your daily limit and will need to reattempt the following day.
Additionally, if you encounter errors when syncing your payrun from Xero, it is advised that you first troubleshoot your payrun in Xero and resolve any issues there before reattempting to sync.
Payment conditions with Xero
Strict Processing:
If any payments sent to Modulr in a batch for processing fail validation, then the whole batch will fail validation. You'll need to go back to Xero to re-send.
Consolidated Payments – default setting is ON
When the Consolidated Payments setting is ON, payments in a batch that are to be sent to the same destination account will be grouped and sent as a single transaction.
ON = If payments have the same destination, they'll send as a single consolidated payment
OFF = Payments to the same destination will send as individual payments
Changing the Consolidated Payment Setting
→ To change the Consolidated Payments setting, contact Support
Setting up payments
There's a few general conditions that need to be set in order to make payments with Xero:
| Topic | Conditions |
| Bills currency | Must be GBP |
| Supplier’s Financial details | Details must be completed Bank Account Name (use as Payee Name) can only have alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) plus full stop, hyphen, solidus, or ampersand and be fewer than 100 characters. Sort Code and Account Number must be 14 digits; Sort Code is also accepted in the format 00-00-00. |
| Account syncing |
Modulr E-Money account must be synced with Xero. After sync, it’s created as Bank Account |
Single payments
| Payment reference | Details |
| Payment reference on Modulr payment request An alternative option is selected if the precedent one is empty. Payment reference must consist of at least 6 alphanumeric characters that are not all the same. Optional, uncounted characters include space, hyphen(-), full stop (.), ampersand(&), and forward slash (/). Total of all characters must be less than 18. |
Single payment (Unique bill) 1st option: Xero Payment Reference 2nd option: Xero Bill Reference 3rd option: Xero Organisation name |
Batch / Consolidated Payments
| Payment reference | Details |
| Payment reference on Modulr payment request An alternative option is selected if the precedent one is empty. Payment reference must consist of at least 6 alphanumeric characters that are not all the same. Optional, uncounted characters include space, hyphen(-), full stop (.), ampersand(&), and forward slash (/). Total of all characters must be less than 18. |
Batch Payment (Group of bills) 1st option: Xero supplier's fix reference (Set on supplier's financial details) 2nd option: Xero Bill reference 3rd option: Xero Organisation name |
Payment Processing Rules
When Payment is removed in Modulr (Cancelled or Rejected), then:
- Payment is deleted from the Bill
- Or the batch payment is removed from the Bills
- When requirements for a payment are not met it will be rejected. The Bill will move to Awaiting Payment status. Review bill notes to get details of the rejection. If is part of a batch all the bills will be rejected.
- Any bill that has previously been recorded as paid, and it must be paid again in Xero due to needing to amend the bill, it will be ignored by Modulr and won't create a new Payment Request (either single or batch) in the Modulr Portal.
Xero has limits to the amount calls Modulr can perform in a minute and daily basis, which could affect:
- Time to process large batch payments (+ 50 payments per batch).
- The number of large batches could be processed daily.
Bank feeds
All Modulr accounts that have been synced to Xero, will automatically feed into Xero with bank statements for all Pay In or Pay Out transactions that occur, including payments made for your bills in Xero.