Overview
Journals are the heart of the accounting system, holding the details of all transactions against each account over time in the general ledger. They are used to build reports such as the Profit and Loss (aka Income) Statement, Balance Sheet and others.
Xero automatically creates Journal records for any transactions that are approved and are the heart of the accounting system, holding details of all transactions against each account over time.
Amounts are signed so that they can be summed to create totals. Positive amounts are income and negative amounts are used for expenses.
Unlike Invoices, they don't hold details of who was transacted with. They are complete, so expect to find Salary, Tax and other non-invoiced Financial information here.
Forecasting with Journals
To simplify forecasting and budgeting, Connectorly automatically creates additional Journal entries (which can be filtered by Journal Type).
Draft Invoice, Forecast Invoice, FX Exposure and Forecast Budget values are created and added to the Actual Journals that come from Xero. The Journal Type field is used to distinguish them as follows:
Journal Type | Notes |
ACTUAL | These are the Journals from Xero. |
DRAFT INVOICE | These are calculated so that the effect of DRAFT invoices on forecasts and budgets can be seen. These are invoices that you can see in DRAFT in Xero. |
FORECAST INVOICE | These are calculated so that the effect of future REPEATING Invoices on forecasts and budgets can be seen. |
FX EXPOSURE | Xero doesn't provide values for FX EXPOSURE through the API for: REALISED, UNREALISED AND REVALUATIONS. So these are calculated daily based on European Central Bank (ECB) FX rates.
A detailed description of the rates used in the calculations is provided in the Journal Description. |
FORECAST BUDGET | Forecast Budget amounts are calculated for the current month and future months, if the actuals are less than 25% of the Budget amount.
In this way, and particularly for the current month if you are tracking forecast against actuals, the budgeted amount will remain as a placeholder until actuals are available. |
Multi Currency Xero Support
As well as providing the Net, Tax and Gross values of the original Journal, values for your chosen Reporting Currency are calculated. These are signified by (RC) after their name.
If you are working with Xero Journal data from multiple organisations, use the Reporting Currency (RC) values for any calculations, to avoid adding amounts that are in different currencies.
Data Model
Field | Type | Notes |
Account Code | Text | The Account Code for the Journal. e.g. 200 |
Account Name | Text | The corresponding Account Name. e.g. Sales If want to report and link other sources of financial information (for example to link Budgets and Invoices data to compare actuals and forecasts) then use the linked Account Name field from the Accounts table. |
Connection Name | Text | The name of the Connection. Typically the name of the Xero Organisation. |
Contact ID | Text | The contact Xero ID |
Contact Name | Text | The contact name |
Created | Datetime | When the Journal was created. |
Data current as of | Datetime | When the Data was taken from Xero. |
Description | Text | The Journal Description.
In the case of the FX EXPOSURE entries, a detailed explanation is given for each Journal line to explain how it has been calculated. |
Gross Amount | Number | The Gross Amount (Net and Tax) in the base currency of the Xero Organisation. |
Gross Amount (RC) | Number | The Gross Amount (Net and Tax) in the reporting currency. |
Journal Currency | Text | The ISO 3 letter code of the Journal transaction currency (Xero Organisation Base Currency). |
Journal Date | Date | The financial date of the Journal. Not the same as Created. |
Journal Number | Number | For ACTUALS these are from Xero. DRAFT and FORECAST INVOICE Journal Numbers start from 800,000,000. FX EXPOSURE Journal Numbers start from 900,000,000 and FORECAST BUDGETS start from 910,000,000. Note these values are subject to change. |
Journal Type | Text | {'ACTUAL', 'DRAFT INVOICE', 'FORECAST BUDGET', 'FORECAST INVOICE', 'FX EXPOSURE'} |
Net Amount | Number | The Net Amount in the base currency of the Xero Organisation. |
Net Amount (RC) | Number | The Net Amount in the reporting currency. |
Product Code | Text |
|
Reference | Text |
|
Reporting Currency | Text | The ISO 3 letter currency code. |
Reporting Currency Rate | Number | The FX Rate used to calculate the Reporting Currency Amounts. Rates are taken as the closing rates as reporting by the ECB on the invoice date. |
Source Table | Text | The related record source table |
Source Type | Text | {'ACCPAY', 'ACCPAYCREDIT', 'ACCPAYPAYMENT', 'ACCREC', 'ACCRECCREDIT', 'ACCRECPAYMENT', 'APCREDITPAYMENT', 'APOVERPAYMENT', 'APPREPAYMENT', 'ARCREDITPAYMENT', 'AROVERPAYMENT', 'CASHPAID', 'CASHREC', 'DIRECTCOSTS', 'EXPCLAIM', 'EXPPAYMENT', 'MANJOURNAL', 'OVERHEADS', 'SALES', 'TRANSFER'} |
Tax Amount | Number | The Tax Amount in the base currency of the Xero Organisation. |
Tax Amount (RC) | Number | The Tax Amount in the reporting currency. |
Tax Type | Text | From Xero based on the Account. |
Tracking Category 0 | Text |
|
Tracking Category 1 | Text |
|
Tracking Option 0 | Text |
|
Tracking Option 1 | Text |
|