Syncing purchases to Xero and MYOB

Connecting Xero or MYOB

A company admin sets this up once from the web admin. You can connect one accounting system at a time.

1. Open Accounting in the Company section of the admin menu.
2. Click Connect to Xero or Connect to MYOB, sign in to your accounting software and allow access. You’ll come back to AltScrap with a “Connected” message.
3. MYOB only: under “1. MYOB company file”, choose the company file the bills should go into and click Save. You’ll only see files your MYOB login can open.
4. Under “Pay scrap sellers from”, choose the bank or cash account you pay sellers from and click Save.

What gets sent

Every person or business you buy from is a supplier as far as your books are concerned, because you pay them. Each purchase is sent like this:

• The seller becomes a supplier contact. AltScrap looks for a matching contact first (by email or name, and in MYOB also by phone or the contact it was imported from), and only creates one if there’s no match. A purchase with no seller attached goes to a contact called Walk-in Seller.
• The purchase becomes a supplier bill, with one line per item showing the weight, price and total. The AltScrap sale number goes in the bill’s reference (Xero) or supplier invoice number (MYOB).
• GST follows the purchase. Purchases from GST-registered suppliers carry GST so you can claim the credit. Everything else goes across with no GST.
• In Xero the lines go to account 310, Cost of Goods Sold in a standard Australian chart. In MYOB they go to your first Cost of Sales account.
• Purchases made at the counter are recorded as paid, so a payment for the full amount is put against the bill from the account you chose and the bill shows as paid. An older sale that was saved as unpaid goes across as a bill awaiting payment — record that payment in Xero or MYOB.

For a GST-registered supplier, that bill is the accounts side of the RCTI you issued for the purchase. Payouts don’t go across separately; the payment on the bill covers them.

Sending purchases across

Purchases go across when you sync them, either one at a time or in a batch.

1. One sale from the web admin: open it from Sales and click Sync to Xero (or Sync to MYOB) in the Accounting sync box.
2. In bulk from the staff app: on Purchases, admins tap Accounting at the top. Tap Sync on one purchase, or select several (or Select all loaded) and tap the Sync selected button.
3. Check the result. Synced means the bill and payment are both in. Billed, awaiting payment means the bill is in but the sale was saved as unpaid — record the payment in Xero or MYOB.

Bringing your MYOB contacts into AltScrap

If you’ve been running MYOB for a while, your regular sellers are probably already in it as supplier contacts. You can bring them across so you don’t have to type them in again. This only works with MYOB, and it needs the company file chosen (a payment account isn’t needed for this step).

1. On Accounting, click Import from MYOB, then Load contacts from MYOB. Contacts come in up to 200 at a time.
2. Each contact is marked Ready, Needs fixing, Possible duplicate or Skipped. Anything that matches an existing AltScrap record on MYOB ID, ABN, name, email or phone is flagged and won’t be imported.
3. Tick the contacts you trade with, or click Select ready contacts shown.
4. For each business, check its GST status on the ABR (there’s a link) and choose Registered or Not registered. AltScrap doesn’t guess GST status from MYOB.
5. Click Import, then load the next page if there are more.

People come in as unverified customers, so check their ID at their next visit. Businesses need a valid ABN and land in Supplier Approvals under New applications. From there they still need to give you their bank details and sign the RCTI agreement before you can buy from them as a supplier. Later edits in MYOB aren’t copied across automatically.

When something doesn’t come through

1. Find the failures. On Sales in the web admin, set the sync filter to Sync failed. In the staff app, use the Sync failed filter on the Accounting screen.
2. Open the sale. The Accounting sync box shows Failed and the message from Xero or MYOB underneath.
3. Fix the cause, then click Retry sync. After a batch in the staff app, you can retry all the failures in one go.

• “No payment account configured” — open Accounting and pick the account you pay sellers from.
• “Select a MYOB company file before syncing” — choose the company file on the Accounting page.
• A sign-in or token error, or nothing has synced for a couple of months — the connection has lapsed. Click Disconnect and connect again. For MYOB you’ll need to choose the company file and payment account again.
• An error from Xero or MYOB itself, such as a locked period or a missing tax code — fix it in your accounting software, then retry.
• “This sale has been voided” — voided sales can’t be synced, and that’s expected.