Connect Foreman and Xero

The question every builder eventually asks about a finished job is what it actually cost, and most can only answer it roughly. The hours are in one place and the bills are in another, and joining them by hand takes an afternoon nobody has.

Connected together, that becomes a question you ask in a sentence.

Practical ways to use Foreman and Xero

Check a subbie's invoice against the days he was actually on site.

"Mercer Plumbing invoiced 38 hours on Kingsley Street in March. Does that match the site diary?"

This is the one that pays for itself. Foreman knows who was on which job and for how long, because the crew logged it at the gate. Xero has the bill. Nobody else can answer it, because nobody else holds both halves.

Work out what a job actually cost.

"What did the Pacific Avenue patio cost me, all in?"

Hours and duration come from the diary, bills and materials from Xero. Foreman holds no dollar figures anywhere, so without the accounting side connected you get the time and none of the money.

Build the evidence for a progress claim.

"Pull the diary entries for Beach House between the 1st and the 15th."

Security of payment adjudication is decided on documents made at the time. Your diary entries are exactly that, and they line up against the claim you raised in Xero.

Support a variation.

"Find the diary entries where the client asked for something different on Beach House, and show me the variations I've invoiced."

Verbal instructions recorded on the day, matched against what was actually billed. The gap between those two is where builders lose money.

See which jobs are worth doing.

"Across everything I finished last year, which jobs took the most hours relative to what I invoiced?"

A year of diary hours against a year of revenue. Most small builders have never been able to see this.

Chase what hasn't been billed.

"Which projects have diary entries in the last fortnight but no invoice raised?"

What you need first

Three things, and none of them involve writing code:

1. An AI assistant. Claude or ChatGPT. Both can do this, and it generally needs a paid plan.
2. Foreman connected to it. One click from API and integrations in your account. You approve it in the browser the same way you would sign into anything else.
3. Xero connected to it. Xero publish the piece that does this themselves, and the connecting is done from the assistant.

That is the whole setup, and most builders are through it in ten minutes. There is nothing to install, no fields to map across, and no automation to configure. If you would rather someone walked you through it, ask us and we will.

Where this falls over

If your bills are not coded to jobs in Xero, none of the money questions work. The assistant can only match a bill to a site if something in Xero says which site it belongs to. Plenty of small builders code everything to one big expense account, and if that is you, this pairing gives you the hours and nothing else until you start tracking by job.

The accounting half is not ours. If the Xero side is down or slow, that is between you and Xero. We cannot fix it and cannot support it.

Nothing is written back. Everything here is reading from both sides. Foreman never touches your accounts, which is deliberate, and it means you still raise the invoice yourself.

Related

Connect Foreman and MYOB covers the same ground for AccountRight. Connect Foreman and the weather record is the one for delay and extension-of-time claims.