Xero Integration - Tracking Categories

Article author
Greg Pietras
  • Updated

What is the context?

Xero’s online accounting software connects small business owners with their numbers, their bank, and advisors anytime.

What is the purpose of the article?

This article will walk you through the setup and functionality of the Tracking Categories feature. The following topics will be covered:

Click Xero Interface - What can you do with Xero? for a full list of the actions you can take on an invoice in Meddbase.

Click here for an article on generating invoice, marking as 'sent', making payment.

Click here for an article on raising a credit note and short falling an invoice.

Click here for an article on refunding payment.

 

Overview

Tracking categories is a feature in Meddbase that supports an integration with tracking categories within Xero.

It can, however be used as a standalone feature that gives Meddbase users a useful way to categorise and sub-categorise (Parent and Child categories) certain entities, e.g. Sites, Location, Appointment Types, in Meddbase and report on them, allowing for segmenting and aggregating data by categories.


Consider this example:

  • A category - Region, is created.
  • Region category has a few configured options (sub-categories) that can be set for it such as North, South, etc.

The above setup can be used to categorise sites and locations by Region, resulting in billing items created in appointments at a given site/location to inherit the given Region value, allowing creating reports that aggregate items/invoices by region, or segment the information to, e.g., sum only the invoices in the North region.

Enabling the feature

To enable Tracking Categories in your Meddbase chamber:

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Configuration tile.
  3. Click Chargeable feature on the left hand side pane.
  4. Tick the Tracking categories checkbox.
  5. Click Save.

[Full alt text]

Creating Tracking Categories in Meddbase

To create Tracking Categories: 

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Common Catalogues tile.
  3. Open the Tracking Categories catalogue and click +New tracking category...
  4. Name the category (Parent category), e.g. Region.
  5. Click Save.
  6. To create a Region sub-category (Child category), open the Region category (Parent category) and click +New tracking category...
  7. Name the sub-category, e.g. North.
  8. Click Save.

Child Categories withing the Parent Category can be created in a Tree Structure, meaning subsequent Child Categories can be created within a Parent Category. When linking categories to entities, e.g. Sites, you select a Child Category, not the Parent Category.

Linking Tracking Categories to entities in Meddbase

The ability to link Tracking Categories to entities allows the system to automatically track these categories based on the specific context,

E.g.:

  • A Tracking Category is linked to a Site.
  • Any Billing Item generated from an appointment conducted at that Site will automatically be linked to the same tracking category when created.

Linking Tracking Categories to Sites 

To link Tracking Category to Sites:

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Common Catalogues tile.
  3. Open the Sites catalogue and click on the relevant Site.
  4. In the Tracking categories section click Add.
  5. In the Pick tracking category* dialog window open the relevant Parent Category and click the required Child Category. Once you select a tracking category the picker will close and you'll see the selected value appear now in the main tracking categories section, it shows the full path of the selected value, like so: Parent name / Child name. Click the Remove category.png icon to remove the category. Click the category name to re-open the Pick tracking category dialog window and select a different Parent name / Child name.
  6. Click Add to link another Tracking Category.
  7. Click Save  to apply your settings.

[Full alt text]

You may select only a single value (Child Category) per Parent Category. If you have selected a value for every Parent category then clicking the Add button will just show that you have no other values left to select.

Linking Tracking Categories to Locations

To link Tracking Categories to Locations created for your Sites:

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Common Catalogues tile.
  3. Open the Sites catalogue and click on the relevant Site.
  4. Click the relevant Location.
  5. In the Tracking categories section click Add.
  6. In the Pick tracking category dialog window open the relevant Parent Category and click the required Child Category. 
  7. Click Add to link another Tracking Category.
  8. Click Save to apply your settings.

 

Linking Tracking Categories to Appointment Types

To link Tracking Categories to Appointment Types:

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Appointment Admin tile.
  3. Click New to create a new appointment Type, or Edit, to amend an existing one.
  4. In the Tracking categories section click Add.
  5. In the Pick tracking category dialog window open the relevant Parent Category and click the required Child Category. 
  6. Click Add to link another Tracking Category.
  7. Click Save  to apply your settings.

[Full alt text]

Linking Tracking Categories to Services

To link Tracking Categories to Services:

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Service Management tile.
  3. Click New to create a new Service, or open the service folder and click on an existing service to amend it.
  4. In the Tracking categories section click Add.
  5. In the Pick tracking category dialog window open the relevant Parent Category and click the required Child Category. 
  6. Click Add to link another Tracking Category.
  7. Click Save  to apply your settings.

[Full alt text]

Linking Tracking Categories to Clinicians

To link Tracking Categories to Clinicians:

  1. From the Start Page click the Clinician tile.
  2. Click Find clinician on the Clinician tile.
  3. Search for the relevant professional and click on the search result.
  4. On the Clinician details page click Personal details.
  5. In the Tracking categories section click Add.
  6. In the Pick tracking category dialog window open the relevant Parent Category and click the required Child Category. 
  7. Click Add to link another Tracking Category.
  8. Click Save  to apply your settings.

Billing Items and Tracking Categories

Typically, Billing items are generated from a Service, e.g. Consultation, and are therefore linked to that Service.

Furthermore, most billing items are also generated from an invoice created from an appointment. If this is the case and the billing item is on an invoice linked to an appointment then the following information can be extracted from the appointment:

    • Site, e.g. London Site.
    • Location, e.g. Room 1.
    • Appointment type, e.g. Initial Consultation.
    • Consumed Services, e.g. Test or Vaccine.
    • All clinicians attending the appointment.

Every entity, e.g. Site, can only have 1 value per Parent category selected, e.g. Region/North (you cannot add another value from the Region parent category for this entity, e.g. Region / South). 

However, another entity, e.g. Location, can have a different value from the same Parent category, e.g. Region/Nort West.

If a billing item is generated from an appointment, that took place at the above Site and Location, 2 values from the same tracking category would be available:

  • Region / North - linked to the Site.
  • Region / North West - linked to the Location..

In such cases the system will prioritise values based on the entity the value is linked to. The priority is as follows:

  1. Service - highest priority
  2. Clinician(s)
  3. Appointment Type
  4. Location
  5. Site - lowest priority

This means that whenever a billing item is generated in a context, e.g. from an appointment, where different entities the billing item is associated to, e.g. Site, Location, Appointment Type etc. have linked values from the same Tracking category, the system will use the value linked to the highest priority entity.

 

Manually adding Tracking Categories to Billing Items

When a Billing Item is generated and the status of the Invoice remains Not sent, you can manually add Tracking categories to the billing item (if no entities it is associated to had Tracking categories).

You can also modify currently added Tracking categories:

  1. On an invoice, click the relevant Billing Item
  2. In the Tracking categories section click Add.
  3. In the Pick tracking category dialog window open the relevant Parent Category and click the required Child Category. 
  4. Click Add to link another Tracking Category.
  5. Click Save  to apply your settings.

[Full alt text]

 

Active Tracking Categories for Xero

Whilst you can define multiple Tracking categories and multiple entities can have respective Tracking categories linked in Meddbase, the Xero integration only allows up to 2 Tracking categories (Parent categories) to be active and sent.

To select the Parent tracking categories to be sent to Xero:

  1. From the Start Page click the Admin tile.
  2. Click the Configuration tile.
  3. Click Accountancy.
  4. In the External application section navigate to Tracking categories.
  5. Click in the Tracking category 1 & 2 fields respectively and select the Parent tracking category you wish to be sent to Xero.
  6. Click Save  to apply your settings.

The same Parent category cannot be used for both Xero tracking categories.

[Full alt text]

 

Configuring Tracking Categories in Xero

To configure tracking categories in Xero:

  1. Navigate to the Xero site. 
  2. From the Dashboard select Accounting > Advanced.
  3. Click the Tracking categories link.

On this page you can now set create, edit and delete tracking categories and modify the options within them as necessary.

[Full alt text]

 

Using Tracking Categories

Once configuration is complete, so:

  1. Tracking categories are defined in Meddbase.
  2. Tracking categories are linked to relevant entities in Meddbase.
  3. Active Tracking categories are selected for Xero in Meddbase.
  4. Tracking categories are configured in Xero.

You can start using Tracking categories to send relevant information to Xero regarding Billing Items generated in a context, e.g. from an Appointment.

When an invoice is marked as Sent in Meddbase, this creates the invoice in Xero.

Each Billing Item in Meddbase is converted to a relevant line item in Xero.

The integration will check the Billing Item and all Tracking category values set on it, it will check the 2 active Parent categories to be sent (Xero Tracking category 1 and Tracking category 2) and if the Billing Item has a value for either of these Parent categories, then that value will be sent as a tracking category value for the line item.

In Xero, you can find the relevant created invoice, and in each line item row there is a set of grey text along the bottom listing certain properties of the lined item, such as the Account and the Tax Rate.

Here is where any tracking category values set will be listed too.

For example when a Billing Item is attached to an invoice in Meddbase. It has 2 Tracking categories (both shown as Parent name / Child name):

  • Region / North 
  • Price Range / Mid

Marking the invoice as Sent, will create the invoice in Xero.

If both the Region and Price Range tracking categories are correctly configured in Xero, you can see the tracking categories sent across correctly into the relevant Xero line item with the values of North and Mid respectively, as below:

[Full alt text]

 

Review date

This article was last updated on 11th of Sept 2023 in the context of Meddbase version 1.277.1.21461.