We’ve released new technical best practice documentation to help you build great integrations with Xero. We created these best practices after receiving feedback from apps and developers who wanted more specific information on building high quality integrations with the Xero platform.

These best practices can be used by anyone building to Xero, and includes relevant information for certification too.

One of the great things about our platform is the community of apps and developers. Thank you to all of the apps who have given us permission to share screenshots of how they’ve implemented various features so you can learn from them.

What’s in the best practice documentation?

The new documentation contains answers to questions such as “What’s the best way to handle multiple tenants?” or “How do I test App Store Subscriptions?”

The place to start is the best practices overview. This page breaks down in alphabetical order all of the features which we’ve created best practices for. You can find this by:

1. Going to the Xero Developer documentation page
2. Clicking on ‘Best Practices’ in the side-menu

Each of the topics in the overview page has been grouped into the following sections, summed up they cover:

• Managing connections includes essential requirements around handling connections with tenants and how best to handle multi-tenancy.
• Branding and naming covers how best to use Xero branding eg Xero’s logo, buttons and considerations with naming your app.
• Categorising transactions explains how to categorise transactions in Xero such as invoices and bills to pay, using account mapping, tracking categories and items (Products and Services).
• Data integrity highlights the importance of accurate data and covers rounding, handling currencies, tax and, where appropriate, contacts.
• User experience offers some powerful and easy ways to enhance the users’ experience; deep linking, invoice and bank transaction urls, error handling and invoice status are included here.
• Integration health suggests methods to ensure your integration works at its best, such as handling rate limits, making the most of the if-modified-since parameter and paging results.

Getting your app certified

If you’re planning to complete app certification, each best practice page explains what you must do to meet our certification requirements. The guides compliment our streamlined certification checkpoints which we updated earlier this year. These best practices will make it clearer and easier for you to know what you must build to meet certification standards.

Once you’ve got your app ready, log into the developer centre, find your app and register your application to join the Xero App Store.

Start using the best practices

This new documentation has been created to support the apps and devs building to Xero. Take some time to have a read through and discover what’s required, what’s recommended and neat tricks to make your integration beautiful. If you’re working towards certification, these resources will help make your certification journey smooth and easy.

If you have any questions, requests for other things we could include or need additional support, reach out to us at api@xero.com.