ServiceM8 Pay makes the deposit process easy for both you and your customers. You set a percentage of a job's value as your default deposit requirement, and customers are automatically prompted to pay it when accepting a quote. Learn more about Taking Deposits with ServiceM8 Pay.
With ServiceM8 connected to your Xero account, when you take a deposit with ServiceM8 Pay, it’s added as a payment to the job card in ServiceM8, which is promptly synced to Xero as a “prepayment” credit against the client. This ensures you’re managing the payment appropriately, and streamlines the reconciliation process once the job is complete and the remaining balance has been paid.
Requirements for Deposits to sync to Xero
Deposits can only sync to Xero as prepayments when the ‘Default account for payments’ is set to a BANK account.
To set the 'Default account for payments' to a bank account, go to Account > Settings > Preferences > Invoicing > Xero, and choose from the dropdown next to 'Default account for payments'.
NOTE: if you have activated the ServiceM8 Pay Transactions auto-reconciliation feature, then your 'ServiceM8 Pay Clearing Account' will also need to be set to a BANK account. To update your ‘ServiceM8 Pay Clearing Account’ to a bank account, go to Account > Settings > Preferences > Invoicing > ServiceM8 Pay Transactions > Update Settings.
How Deposits sync to Xero
When a client pays a deposit upon accepting your Quote or Proposal, it will appear as a note in the job’s Diary, and added as a payment against the job:
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The deposit payment will also sync to Xero, as a “prepayment” credit against the client. If not immediately, the payment will appear in Xero within 30 minutes.
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Once the job is done, update its status to Completed in ServiceM8, generate the final invoice and send it for payment of the remaining balance (if payment wasn’t accepted on site). The invoice will reflect the deposit paid already, and the remaining balance due:
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Approve the invoice to Xero, as you normally would (this may be after sending the invoice, or after receiving payment, depending on your preference and workflow).
Note that while the deposit "prepayment" would have synced immediately to Xero at the time it was paid, it will not be applied to the invoice in Xero until the job is Completed and fully paid in ServiceM8, and approved to Xero.
Done! Once the job is fully paid, when reviewing the invoice in Xero, in the totals section you will notice both the deposit and final payments:
