Evolution reads payments back from Xero overnight, so an invoice paid in Xero shows as paid here the next morning without anyone doing anything. Where that has not happened — an old invoice, a payment entered well after the fact, a night the sync could not reach your Xero organisation — the Sync payments from Xero button on Invoice Entry goes and gets it, for that one invoice, straight away.
Why a Payment Goes Missing
The overnight sync is built for volume, so it only looks at the invoices most likely to have moved: recent ones, still carrying a balance. That keeps it fast, but it leaves a few gaps:
- The invoice is old. The nightly project works within a rolling window of recent invoices. A payment that lands against an invoice older than that window is never looked for.
- The invoice already looked settled here. The project concentrates on invoices with an outstanding balance, so a later adjustment in Xero against an invoice Evolution already considered closed can be passed over.
- The sync could not reach Xero that night. If the Xero authorisation had lapsed, or Xero was unavailable, that night’s run is simply skipped — and the next run picks up from where it left off rather than going back over the gap.
The button avoids all of that by asking Xero a much narrower question: “show me every payment you hold against this one invoice” — with no date limit at all. Anything Evolution does not already have is brought across.
Where to Find It
Open the invoice in Invoice Entry and find the Payments panel. The circular sync arrows sit in the panel heading, next to the + used to enter a payment by hand.
Press it once. Evolution contacts Xero and reports back underneath the heading; the whole thing normally takes a couple of seconds.
What You Will See
Nothing was missing
The usual answer, and a good one — Evolution and Xero already agree on this invoice. The message tells you how many payments Xero holds against it, so you can see the check really happened.
Payments were brought across
Evolution tells you how many payments it applied and what they came to, then reloads the invoice so the payment list, the balance and the paid status are all up to date in front of you.
Payments brought in this way are recorded exactly as the overnight sync records them: posted to the bank account that matches the Xero account the money went into, committed to the ledger, and marked in the payment list so you can tell where they came from.
Something stopped it
If Evolution cannot reach Xero, or the invoice is not in a state it can check, it says so in red and does nothing else. Nothing is part-applied — either the payment comes across in full or the invoice is left exactly as it was.
Payments Deleted in Xero
The check runs both ways. If a payment was entered in Xero, came across to Evolution, and has since been deleted in Xero, pressing the button reverses it here too — the payment is backed out, the ledger entry is reversed and the invoice goes back to owing the money.
That is the point of the button: after you press it, this invoice reads the same in both systems.
When the Button Is Not There
| What you see | Why |
|---|---|
| No sync button at all | Xero is not switched on for your company, or you do not have Accounts Receivable access. See Settings → Company Setup. |
| No sync button on this invoice | The invoice has not been sent to Xero yet, so there is nothing over there to check against. Send it first. |
| “Commit this invoice before syncing payments from Xero.” | The invoice is still a draft here. A payment has to be applied against a committed invoice, so commit it and press the button again. |
| “Could not connect to Xero.” | The Xero authorisation has expired or been revoked. An administrator needs to reconnect on Settings → Company Setup. This is the same thing that stops the overnight sync. |
| “…sent to a Xero organisation that is no longer connected.” | This invoice lives in a Xero organisation that has since been disconnected. Reconnect that organisation to check it. |
Common Questions
Do I need to press this on every invoice?
No. The overnight sync still does the work for you. This is for the invoice in front of you that you know has been paid in Xero and does not show it here.
Will it change anything in Xero?
No. It only reads. Nothing is created, changed or deleted in Xero by pressing it.
Does it check the whole invoice or just new payments?
The whole invoice, every time, with no date limit. That is deliberate — the payments the overnight sync misses are usually the old ones.
Can I use it on a supplier bill?
Not yet. The button is on customer invoices. Supplier bills are still reconciled by the overnight sync.
It said “nothing missing” but I can see the payment in Xero.
Check that the payment in Xero is allocated to this invoice and is not still sitting unreconciled in the bank feed. Evolution asks Xero for the payments against this invoice specifically — a receipt that has not been matched to the invoice in Xero yet will not be found.
Is there a record of it?
Yes. Anything the button applies or reverses is written to the invoice’s history, with who pressed it and what changed.
Related Pages
- Xero Integration — connecting Evolution to Xero and mapping branches to organisations.
- Control Accounts & Tax Accounts — the bank and control accounts payments post to.
- Credit Notes (AR & AP) — the other way an invoice balance is reduced.
- Credit Limits & Stop Credit — what an out-of-date balance affects.