Choose an Inventory Integration

There are two different ways to integrate inventory with Xero:

• Sync tracked inventory items with Xero - sync items in your app with Xero inventory,
  or
• Sync inventory transactions with Xero - sync inventory accounting transactions with Xero and manage inventory items entirely in your app.

Syncing inventory items may seem like the obvious choice, but it also presents challenges:

• Do you support quantity-on-hand going below zero?
• Do you support more than 4,000 inventory items in an organisation?
• Are your inventory items in a hierarchy of classes or groups? Do they go down to different SKUs etc.?
• Do you support tracking inventory across multiple locations (e.g. warehouse, shop)?
• Do you currently support inventory accounting methods other that average cost (e.g. FIFO)?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then it might be a good idea to continue managing inventory items entirely in your app and only send inventory transactions to Xero.

If the answers to all those questions are no, then syncing your inventory items might be an option. Syncing items allows you to make use of Xero's inventory accounting functionality rather than building your own.