Most AP tools talk to Xero. Fewer of them listen back.
Bills arrive by email. They get reviewed in a thread, approved in a separate tool, and keyed into Xero days later, line by line. Tracking categories get filled in at that point, by whoever has the file open, often from memory. By the time a bookkeeper opens Xero, what they're looking at is a record of what was processed, not a true picture of what is happening on the jobs.
That gap has a cost. Tracking categories get missed or guessed. Costs hit Xero days after they were incurred. Month-end becomes a reconstruction exercise.
What two-way actually does
Most tools that integrate with Xero push a summary record across when a bill is approved. It's a one-way handoff: Xero gets a result, not a record.
MakersHub's integration runs both ways. As a bill moves through capture, coding, approval, and payment in MakersHub, Xero stays aligned at each step. The practical difference shows up in the details:
- When an approver changes a GL code in MakersHub, Xero reflects the change.
- When a new vendor is added during coding, it appears in Xero without creating a duplicate.
- When a payment is recorded, the status flows back into MakersHub.
- When a bill is edited mid-process, both systems hold the same version.
The two systems aren't trading summaries, they're holding the same record.
Bills arrive in Xero complete
MakersHub captures bills as they come in and handles the full AP workflow from there.. WiseVision, the engine behind the capture, doesn't just extract text from the document, it reads the bill the way a financial controller would: which lines are materials, which are labor, which job each line belongs to, which cost code applies, what tax treatment is correct.
Tracking categories are applied in the same step, not bolted on later. PO matching runs against the original purchase order, flagging quantity and price variances before anyone approves the bill. Approvals route by rule: vendor, job, threshold, or any combination. When the bill clears, the complete record syncs into Xero.
What this means for your AP workflow
Take a construction business running four jobs at once.
A supplier bill comes in covering materials across two of those jobs. In a typical Xero setup, that bill sits in someone's inbox until they have time. It gets coded by whoever picks it up. Tracking Categories get added when the bill is keyed into Xero, if they get added at all. By month-end, the bookkeeper is chasing down what happened and rebuilding it after the fact.
With MakersHub and Xero integration, the approver doesn't have to log into Xero to know what they're approving. The bookkeeper doesn't have to verify whether what's in Xero matches what was approved.
Both questions are answered as soon as the bill arrives.
Tracking categories, carried through without rework
Tracking categories in Xero only work when they're applied consistently. That consistency is where most AP workflows break down.
When categories get added at the point of entry, by whichever person has time, after the bill has already moved through approval elsewhere, the data drifts. It drifts most in the setups that need it most: multiple jobs, multiple regions, multiple departments, multiple cost centers.
MakersHub handles tracking categories at the coding stage, not as a separate step afterward. As each line is coded, the category is applied. The structure carries through to Xero exactly as it was set during the workflow. No rework. No memory. No month-end cleanup.
Job costing that reflects the job
In physical economy sectors, job costing in Xero is only useful if the data behind it was captured accurately and on time. Bills coded late, approvals sitting outside the system, tracking categories filled in from memory: each of these turns Xero's job costing into an estimate, not a record of it.
Because MakersHub handles capture, coding, approval, and payment as one continuous process, what's in Xero at any point reflects what's actually happening. The numbers in Xero stop measuring admin work. They start measuring the work.
Close the gap
If you're running AP on Xero with approvals in one place, coding in another, and tracking categories filled in at month-end, the gap is the work. We can close it.
Book a demo and we'll show you what a bill looks like when capture, coding, approval, and payment happen in one record, and land in Xero complete.