Learn how to import your accounting data from Xero
Summary
The business expenditure data that is already in your accounting software, provides a fantastic insight into your carbon footprint, particularly when it comes to your supply chain emissions.
By connecting Ecologi Zero ® to your accounting software we generate emissions calculations for each transaction. This means we can use your existing data to provide you with a carbon footprint that includes the full spectrum of your emissions.
Follow this link to find out more about how we calculate your emissions.
What you'll need to connect to Ecologi Zero
You will need:
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An administrator account and login credentials for your accounting software, so that you can authorise Ecologi Zero to read your transactions data.
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Some knowledge of the Account Codes your business uses, so you can identify codes that are related to salaries and taxes.
What we need:
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Read-only access. Your accounting data is never touched, and we cannot create, update or delete any data.
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Only your business expenditure transaction data. We import transactions related to Direct Costs, Overheads and Fixed Assets, and no other financial data.
Follow this link to find out more about how we keep your data safe and secure.
Connecting to Xero
We’ve designed Ecologi Zero to make integrating your accounting software as easy as possible. Once you’ve completed the following four steps, you’ll be ready to begin your net-zero journey.
1. Connect to your accounting software
During the onboarding process, we’ll ask you to give Ecologi Zero access to your business transactions and you’ll be redirected to your accounting software platform. If you’re using Xero;
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You will be redirected to a secure area of the Xero platform,
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Please enter your Xero credentials (we won’t see or store your accounting software login details),
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Select the organisations in your Xero account you want to include in your emissions calculations, and,
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Click the button to allow Ecologi Zero access.
You can disconnect your accounting software from Ecologi Zero at any time.
2. Exclude transactions that are not needed to calculate your emissions.
Some of your business transactions aren't needed to calculate your carbon footprint, so we’ll exclude these from being imported into Ecologi Zero. We will ask you to select the Account Codes (the codes you use in Xero to group similar or frequently used accounts together in your chart of accounts) related to salaries and director pay, taxes, loans and any adjustments or bank fees. Once you’ve connected to your accounting software:
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You will be returned to Ecologi Zero.
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From a list of your account codes, select those you want to exclude from Ecologi Zero, i.e. codes related to salaries, taxes, loans or adjustments.
If you are not sure which codes to exclude, then you may need to talk to the person or team responsible for your accounting process.
3. The date range for your transactions
At most, Ecologi Zero will import one calendar year of transaction data plus data for the current calendar year. For example, if you signed up in November 2022, Ecologi Zero would import data for all of 2021 (if available) and data from January to November 2022.
This allows you to establish a baseline and set targets in the future. If data is not available for a full calendar year, Ecologi Zero will import all available transactions.
Follow this link to find out how Ecologi Zero uses your transactions.
4. Importing your transactions
This is where Ecologi Zero gets to work; we automatically assign each of your transactions an emissions factor and calculate your emissions based on the value of the transaction. This can take up to 10 mins depending on the volume of transactions to be imported. Please be patient; grab yourself a drink, put your feet up and let us do the hard work.
If there are any problems we’ll send you an error message letting you know what to do. After this first import, your transactions will be synced automatically every day so that your emissions calculations are kept up to date. You can also manually sync your data whenever you want to; simply click the sync button on your dashboard or on the suppliers and transactions page and we’ll do the rest.
All data transfers between your accounting software and Ecologi Zero are encrypted.