Connecting your accounting platform

Otto Capture publishes finished bills and invoices to your client’s accounting platform. Capture supports Xero and FreeAgent, and each client connects to a single accounting platform organisation. This page covers the parts of connecting that work the same way on every platform. The exact authorisation steps, the terms you’ll see, and a few behaviours differ by platform, so for the specifics head to the Xero or FreeAgent page.

Adding a client

From the Clients page in Capture, click Add client
Choose the accounting platform you want to connect
Authorise Capture on the platform’s sign-in screen
You’ll be redirected back to Capture, and data sync begins automatically

Screenshot of the Connect an accounting platform dialog, listing Xero and two FreeAgent connection options — The Add client dialog lists Xero and both FreeAgent connection types together; the FreeAgent rows are told apart by their descriptions.

The platform you pick changes what happens at step 3. See Connecting Xero or Connecting FreeAgent for the steps, the permissions Capture asks for, and how each platform handles things like publish states and currencies.

What Capture syncs

Once a client is connected, Capture reads the reference data it needs to process and publish documents:

Contacts: to match suppliers and customers on your documents, and to create new ones during review.
Account codes: the list of accounts or categories you code line items to.
Tax rates: the rates Otto suggests and validates against.
Currencies: the currencies the organisation can use.
Organisation details: base currency, tax registration, and other settings Otto needs to process documents correctly.

The names of some of these differ by platform (Xero’s “chart of accounts” is FreeAgent’s “categories”, for example), and a few are platform-specific. Your platform page lists exactly what syncs.

Connection status

Each client shows one of four connection statuses on the Clients page and on the client settings page:

Status	Meaning
Active	Connected and syncing. Otto can publish bills and invoices.
Pending setup	Connected, but setup isn’t finished. Finish setup before submitting documents.
Disconnected	The connection has been removed, either by you in Capture or, on some platforms, on the platform’s side.
Connection failed	Capture tried to sync or publish and the platform rejected the connection. Reconnect to resume.

An Active client shows its connected organisation name on the client settings page, along with the last sync time.

A Pending setup client shows a Complete setup action in the Needs setup list on the Clients page, so you can finish connecting it before submitting documents.

Disconnecting and reconnecting

You can disconnect a client at any time from the client settings. Disconnecting:

Stops all data syncing between Capture and the platform
Prevents new documents from being published
Does not delete any documents already in Capture
Does not remove any bills or invoices already published to the platform

To reconnect, open the client settings and click Reconnect. Clients that need attention also show a Reconnect action in the Needs setup list on the Clients page. Reconnecting triggers a fresh data sync, and Otto resumes publishing. Your existing documents and synced data are kept throughout.

How a connection comes to be revoked, and whether revoking it inside the platform is mirrored back into Capture, depends on the platform. See the Xero and FreeAgent pages for the details.