Xero have a new authentication method that provides a smoother client experience and better security. The previous authentication method will be disabled in Senta before April 2021.

Settings Screen

There are some changes to the Xero tab in settings:

These two buttons now mean the following:

• This is still a simple on-off switch. There is no extra functionality here.

• This process has changed significantly. Previously, clicking this button would send you straight into a Xero login process to authorise your account, we now have a new intermediary screen:

Choose a Xero company

The main difference between the previous Xero integration and this one is that a single Xero account can now be used to connect to many organisations.

If you only have one organisation connected to your account, you’ll see a familiar page after clicking the ‘Connect to Xero’ button:

If you have multiple organisations under a single Xero login (which a practice is very likely to have) you’ll get a picker to choose which organisation you want to authorise:

Once you click ‘Allow Access’, Senta will link that organisation to the practice (for Xero Syncing - which remains unchanged).

You’ll notice the button changes status, and if you click the ‘Show Xero Connections’ link, you can see all the connected organisations (more on this later).

Client Integration

The client integration looks similar to the old system. The button hasn’t changed, but the behaviour has.

Clicking Connect with Xero will bring up the same window as we saw in the practice integration; however, you’ll notice that in this example, the practice organisation is shown in the list:

If you wanted to connect the client to the same Xero company as the practice, you could do this (and several clients do, in order to see their own details in Advisory).

When you click the name and choose OK, the client will be linked straight away, there’s no need to re-authorise them since we’ve already done that part.

If you click Disconnect this client, it’ll remove the link to the Senta client, but the practice link will remain intact.

The Main Gotcha...

There is one downside to the new Xero implementation. If you have already connected a client, you must choose them from our new menu, you cannot re-add them via the Connect to Xero link. Shown below:

If you choose to Connect with an existing organisation,

You’ll notice the button says Continue… rather than allow access. Xero doesn’t need to do anything, and as such Senta can’t tell which client has just been selected. It will show this error:

So, when connecting, the client needs to take note and choose their intended organisation from the dropdown:

Again, it’s worth noting that if you disconnect a client in Senta from Xero, we keep the authentication active, so you can just pick it from the list again, it’ll just have no name against it.

On the plus side…

With the new implementation, one login can now authorise many accounts, so unlike the Quickbooks implementation which requires each Senta client to be re authenticated when the authentication expires, with Xero, you can re-authorise every single client that uses that account with a single login.

If your authentication session has expired, it will show on the Xero tab in the Settings area:

When you choose to reconnect, this will send you back through the authentication process where you can this time choose the ‘Continue with x organisations’ option, and all organisations will be reconnected.

The same can be done from the Client Xero tab, where a re-connect button will be displayed.