Supplier payments: every way a payment reaches your books
Deposits, balances and bills paid straight in Xero: how each kind of supplier payment is recorded on a purchase order, what Xero records for each, and how payments made in Xero come back to Landara.
Updated 13 September 2026
Money goes to a supplier at three different moments: before any bill exists (a deposit), once the bill is in your books (the balance), or entirely inside Xero when your bookkeeper pays the bill there. Landara handles all three, and every one of them ends up on the same Payments to supplier card on the purchase order, each with the exchange rate from the day it was paid. This page lists every path, what Xero records for each, and how a payment made in Xero finds its way back.
Sending payments to the books is a Xero feature today. With QuickBooks Online connected, or with no accounting platform connected, payments are recorded on the order only and you enter them in your books as you do now. The order still costs the stock correctly from them.
The five paths
| You… | Landara records | Xero records |
|---|---|---|
| Record a payment without sending it | The payment, with its rate, on the order | Nothing. Enter it in your books as usual, coded to your supplier deposits or prepayments account |
| Record and send, before a bill exists | The payment, marked sent, and later applied | Spend money to the supplier from the bank account you chose, coded to Supplier deposits, no tax, referenced with the order number. Applied to the bill when the bill exists |
| Record and send, when the bill is already in Xero and approved | The payment, marked paid on the bill | A payment on the bill from the bank account you chose, in the bill's currency, at the payment's own rate. One step, nothing to apply later |
| Pay the bill in Xero | One payment row per Xero payment, marked from Xero, with the bank's rate | Whatever your bookkeeper entered. Landara reads it, never changes it |
| Raise the bill in Xero yourself, from the purchase order Landara sent | The bill is adopted and its payments pulled | The bill and its payments, as you made them |
Recording a payment
Add payment on the order takes the type (deposit, balance or other), the date it was paid, the amount in the order's currency and a reference. On a foreign-currency order you also give either what left your bank account or the rate, and Landara derives the other. Entering the bank debit is the better answer: it carries the bank's margin, which is what the goods actually cost you, and the row shows "from bank" so nobody later mistakes it for a typed spot rate. Each payment keeps its own rate for good. Why that matters, and what the accounting standard says, is in Deposits, balances and exchange rates.
When Xero is connected the form has a Send to Xero tick, on by default, and a choice of bank account. The account you used last time is offered first. A payment recorded without the tick can be sent later from its row.
Once the order value has been paid in full, Add payment gives way to "Paid in full". If the supplier billed more than the order, change the lines.
Sending a payment to Xero
Before a bill exists, the payment goes across as spend money to the supplier from the bank account you chose, dated the day you paid, coded to your Supplier deposits account, with no tax, referenced with the order number. Your bank feed line matches it. The row on the order reads "sent to Xero" with the amount and the account, and "not yet applied to the bill".
Three rules govern the spend money:
- It is in the bank account's currency. A 500 USD deposit paid from an AUD account is recorded as the AUD that left the account, with the USD figure in the description. From a USD account it is 500 USD. Any other pairing is refused rather than converted through a rate nobody entered; pick the account the money actually left.
- It carries no tax. The supplier's bill carries the GST, so nothing is claimed twice.
- It needs a Supplier deposits account mapped under Settings, Connections, Journal accounts. Landara offers to create one ("Landara Supplier Deposits") from the connections page. If Xero answers with a permissions error, reconnect Xero: connections made before September 2026 need one more permission to record bank transactions.
When the bill is already in Xero and approved, whether Landara published it or you raised it there, the same Send to Xero records a payment on the bill instead, from the bank account you chose, in the bill's currency at the payment's own rate. The row reads "paid on the bill in Xero" and there is nothing left to apply. Spend money to Supplier deposits is only for money paid before the bill exists.
Applying deposits to the bill
A deposit sent as spend money sits in Supplier deposits until the bill exists. Finalise on the order publishes the bill approved and applies every sent payment in the same step. A payment sent after finalising has an Apply to the bill button on the card. Either way each payment is applied from the Supplier deposits account, in the bill's currency, dated the day it was paid, at that day's rate: Supplier deposits comes back to zero by exactly what the deposit cost, that much of the bill is paid, and Xero books the currency difference between the day you paid and the bill to its realised gains account itself. That is the textbook treatment; Landara posts no separate journal for it.
Two things Xero will not do, and what the card says instead:
- A draft bill cannot take a payment. A bill published from the shipment page is a draft for your bookkeeper to approve; the card asks you to approve it in Xero and then apply. A bill published by Finalise is already approved.
- A payment larger than what is still due on the bill is skipped, and named, never trimmed. Sort it out in Xero and apply the rest.
Undo send on a sent, unapplied row clears Landara's record so the payment can be sent again. It changes nothing in Xero, so void the spend money there first if it should not exist. A sent payment cannot be deleted on the order, because the record exists in the books; once applied it cannot be undone from here either.
Payments made in Xero come back
Your bookkeeper may pay the bill in Xero, in one go or in parts, without opening Landara. Every time you open an order that has a bill with money outstanding, Landara reads the bill's payments from Xero; Pull from Xero on the card does it on demand and shows when it last checked. What comes back:
- One row per payment in Xero, marked "from Xero, paid against bill …", with the bank's exchange rate as Xero holds it. A payment Landara applied itself is recognised, never duplicated.
- A payment you typed on the order and did not send, then paid in Xero for the same amount within three days, is matched to the Xero payment and shown once, marked as matched.
- A payment deleted in Xero is struck through on the card, "no longer on the bill", and comes back if it is re-entered there. Nothing is deleted on the Landara side; a payment that was money once stays visible.
- A payment in another currency than the order's is refused and named in a note on the card. Apply it by hand in Xero.
- A rate that looks entered the wrong way round in Xero (foreign per unit of your currency instead of the other way) is flagged on the card. Fix it in Xero and pull again.
When the bill becomes fully paid, the stock is re-costed at what was paid, whether the last payment was pulled from Xero, applied from Landara or recorded straight onto the bill. The order's cost layers are re-valued so that, on a foreign-currency order, they add up to the amount that actually left your bank across every payment. The message says so, the order's history records it, and the Cost layers page shows the new unit costs. An order whose goods are in and whose bill exists but was never costed is costed at the same moment.
There is no scheduled check yet. Payments are read when the order is opened and when you press Pull from Xero.
A bill raised in Xero from the purchase order
If you sent the order to Xero as a purchase order (the button before anything is received) and your bookkeeper copied it to a bill there, Landara adopts that bill the next time the order is opened. The match is exact: Xero's own history on the bill records which purchase order it was copied from. Failing that, a bill whose number or reference equals the order's number or your supplier's reference is taken. Two candidates, or none, adopt nothing, and the card says so, because attaching the wrong bill would attach someone else's payments.
An adopted bill behaves as one Landara published: its payments are pulled, the invoice card reads billed, the Xero purchase order shows billed, and a foreign order with no rate takes the bill's. Finalise on an order whose bill was adopted writes the cost only and sends nothing new to Xero.
Link a bill from Xero on the payments card lists the supplier's bills in Xero, with date, total, amount due and status, for when the automatic match found nothing or picked wrong. Change bill swaps an adopted bill for another, allowed only while no payments have been recorded against it here; a bill Landara published, or one with payments, is refused by name.
Where to see it all
Every send and apply is one line in the order's history and one row under Reports, Publish history, typed Payment, linking back to the order. On the order, the card totals the order value, what has been paid (with the home-currency equivalent on a foreign order) and what is outstanding, and below it the expected total in your currency: the paid part at the rates paid, the unpaid part at the order's rate.
