After SilverSiphon has imported transactions into Xero, you need to reconcile them. The first step is to review what’s imported and work out which way to reconcile it.
Here is simple video guide to reconcile the payments that Silver Siphon creates.
Advanced Settings & Field Mapping Video Guide
This video steps through the advanced settings in Silver Siphon, with some explanations of how the work.
Part 2 then tackles field mapping which can be used to bring additional data into your Stripe Xero bank feed. A great example for this is importing the card country, so that tax rules can be applied automatically.
New Silver Siphon Setup Guide
A few minor things have changed since we created the original setup video.
Here’s an updated one with the slightly different Xero interface, and some additional explanations if things look a little different.
Great news from Stripe – Lower Amex transaction fees for Aussies
If you are using Stripe in Australia, you probably just got this same email.
Good news! We’re lowering prices for accepting American Express cards in Australia, effective immediately.
The new price is 1.75% + 30c per transaction for Australian American Express cards. This is the same price we charge for Australian Mastercard and Visa cards. For international cards, we’ll continue to charge 2.9% + 30c per transaction. As always, the fee for each transaction will be listed in real time in your Dashboard.
There’s no action necessary and we’ve automatically applied the new price to your account. If you have any questions or feedback about this change (or about Stripe in general), please let us know.
Thanks for using Stripe!
This is extremely good news. If you are like me, you love using your Amex for the extra points (I have a semi-addiction to points). Now it doesn’t cost the business anything extra to use it.
Stripe meta field mapping has arrived
Starting today, you can now map Stripe meta fields to Xero.
This is where some checkout systems will add the data you really need in Xero. If you are using one of those, you’ll see that data show up in Stripe like the below image.
To get to this screen, in Stripe, open a payment.
These are the meta fields (form_id, form_title, payment_id)
Over in Silver Siphon, at the bottom of the services page click on “Stripe Fields” – find the “meta” option at the bottom.
When you click, you’ll be prompted to enter the name of the meta key. Enter the value you want from the payment, and click Confirm.
That’s it – that field will come over into Xero.
How to reconcile your transactions in Xero
We often get asked about how to reconcile the payments that Silver Siphon creates. So here is a short guide on exactly how you should do that.
When Stripe clears a payment to your bank account, it will be made up of all the transactions that happened on one particular day. So that could be 1, 5, 10 or 1000 depending on your business.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s say there are 4 payments on the one day, all $100. There is a $1 fee taken out of all of them.
In the Stripe account you have set up in Xero, there will be nine transactions.
4 x $100 (the charges)
4 x $1 (the fees)
1 x -$396 (the lump sum deposit to your bank account)
To reconcile this, you code the charges to your sales account, whatever that is. It is different for every business, but usually starts with a 2. Like 201.
You then reconcile the fees to your bank fees account. We actually set up a “Stripe fees” account because we separate our fees to our bank, PayPal and Stripe.
The transfer is then reconciled by “matching” the transfer in your main bank account where Stripe deposits the money.
After all of this, the Stripe account balance would be zero.
You can get more advanced by setting up bank rules so that Xero recognises all of these transactions and shows the “OK” button in the middle of a green row. All you have to do is give it a quick glance and click OK on all transactions.
You can do this by creating rules on the data that Silver Siphon brings into Xero. Check out the “Field Mapping” section on the Services page to bring in data and even custom text that you can use in bank rules.
Silver Siphon Version 2 – Automatic Reconciliation
The original version of Silver Siphon has processed over half a million transactions for hundreds of Stripe and Xero users. As you know, the app currently works by adding all your Stripe transactions as a bank feed.
This uses a non conventional, non API approach, which is why Silver Siphon is still the only product that solves this problem (maybe because everyone else knows how difficult it is and thinks we are crazy).
Unfortunately, it looks like it will be a long time before a pure API solution can be used to create a true bank feed. Right now, it is sadly impossible.
That said, we’ve recently been through the process of building out an entirely new way of doing things. These will not only import your transactions, but reconcile completely automatically.
For many of you, this will be an awesome, massive time saving addition. It will not suit everyone though.
We’re working through some hiccups and other things that always come up with this kind of project, but rest assured Silver Siphon version 2 will be out soon 🙂
Map Stripe Fields to Xero
Time for a major feature release!
This has been one of your most requested features for Silver Siphon. Now you can choose which Stripe data to import into Xero.
This makes reconciliation totally customisable to your business, and much easier.
An example use (which comes up all the time) is to detect GST on Australian purchases. Do to this you could map the description as
{charge.description} – {card.country}
This would enable you to set up a bank rule where if the description contains the country, code the transaction to GST Payable. Otherwise, code to no GST payable.
To set up field mapping, scroll down to the bottom of the Services page and look for the link “Configure field mapping for Stripe”.
Click the “Stripe Fields” button to customise the two fields that can be imported to Xero – Customer and Description.
Below is a list of fields currently available. Bear in mind that not all of these fields will always have data. It depends on your set up. Have a look in your Stripe account at which fields are populated before setting up field mapping.
Field Mapping Example
- {card.name} – Name on the credit card e.g. John Smith
- {card.country} – Country on the credit card. Useful for setting up bank rules for GST or other tax
- {card.address.country} – Billing address Country
- {card.address.state} – Billing address State
- {customer.id} – Stripe Customer ID. This is a unique ID and not a meangingful name.
- {customer.description} – Customer description as set in Stripe
- {customer.email} – Customer email
- {charge.description} – Description on the actual change/payment
- {charge.statement_descriptor} – Statement descriptor on the actual charge/payment
- {charge.email} – Email on the charge/payment
- {charge.invoice} – Invoice ID on the charge, if available
- {contact_email} – Not a Stripe field. This is customer.email with a fallback of charge.email
- {amount_cents} – Charge amount in cents. $1 would be 100
- {amount} – Charge amount
- {currency_iso} – Currency ISO Code. Australian Dollars would be AUD.
Missing Transactions and False Duplicates in Xero
There is a function in Xero where it tries to detect duplicate transactions.
Duplicates are flagged if there is a transaction of the same amount, on the same day, that is uploaded to Xero on a different day.
For example, imagine you have two a $50 transactions on one day. One is delayed for some reason, and payment is received two days later, but the transaction date is the original date. That second one would appear in Xero two days later with the same date and amount.
Unfortunately, the algorithm doesn’t look at the payment description or payee. Only the date and the amount. That transaction will be deleted without a notification to you.
Fortunately, there is a simple way to see if this has happened.
You can get to the Statement Exceptions report two ways.
- Reports -> All Reports -> Bank Reconciliation Summary -> Statement Exceptions tab -> Choose the bank account and click update
- Dashboard (or bank account) -> Click Manage, then Reconciliation Report -> Statement Exceptions tab
It will look a bit like this.
You can see there are two duplicates. Take a note of the date. In this case Feb 3.
To fix this, you need to find the statement where these transactions exist.
Back on the Dashboard or in the Bank account, go to Manage -> Bank Statements.
Open any statements that overlap with the date you saw in the exceptions report (Feb 3).
It will look something like this.
Notice on the right hand side it says “Deleted”.
Simply tick the boxes on these transactions and click “Restore”.
Repeat for all transactions you found in the exceptions report.
Now you are back to normal 🙂
It’s a good idea to check this report once every month.
What to check when Silver Siphon cannot sync to your Xero account
If you have got the dreaded “Unable to upload transactions to your Xero account” email, then this one is for you!
There are a few reasons why this might happen. Please check that:
- The user admin@silversiphon.com has been invited to the Xero account
- There is a new “Stripe” account in Xero which you created just for Silver Siphon (or you already had it for manual reconciliation). It should be visible on the dashboard of your Xero account
- Accounts must not be locked. If there is even one transaction in Stripe/Silver Siphon that overlaps with a locked period in Xero, the entire sync will fail*. You can set this by going to Settings -> Financial Settings in Xero
*This is because we missing one or two transaction causes a much bigger bookkeeping headache than missing an entire statement.