Xero OAuth 2.0 Migration Case Study

The Business Problem

The invoicing service used Xero's original way of connecting. Under the new standard, each Xero company has to be authorised by a person signing in. Connections then have to be kept alive with access tokens (digital keys) that expire and must be renewed automatically. If the change wasn't made, invoices for iTS's UK, German and other companies would stop flowing into Xero, and so would the balance updates that the sales team relied on in webCRM.

The Solution

In March 2021 wildesoft.net built a small companion app, Xero Authorise. A member of the team uses it to sign in and authorise each iTS company in Xero, starting with the UK and Germany. The tokens it receives are stored securely for the invoicing service to use.

The invoicing service's Xero code was then rewritten for the new standard. The connection code was moved into a clean, reusable layer, and creating contacts and invoices was adapted to Xero's new interface. While this work was under way, the routine that updates customer balances in webCRM was reworked to run faster. Issues found once it went live were fixed within days.

The Result

iTS moved to Xero's new connection standard with invoicing and balance updates still running. Every company was re-authorised in a controlled way, and the cleaner code made later Xero work, such as purchase orders, much easier to add.

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