Type the invoice once
SmarteBuild connects to the tools you already run the business on — Xero for the books, and your own Google or Microsoft mailbox for everything you send. The point of all three is the same: stop entering the same information in two places.
Available on the Builder plan
Orders and expenses straight into the books
The Xero integration takes purchase orders and expenses from SmarteBuild into your accounting system, so the same invoice is not typed twice — once by the person costing the job, and again by the person doing the books.
The three mappings that decide whether it is useful
Setting it up is four tabs — connect, then accounts, jobs and suppliers — and three of those are telling each system what corresponds to what. Get these right and the integration disappears into the background; get them wrong and you are re-coding everything at the other end.
- Suppliers
- Your SmarteBuild suppliers to your Xero contacts, so a bill lands against the right contact.
- Jobs
- Your projects to Xero tracking categories, so costs stay attributable per job.
- Accounts
- Your cost codes to Xero account codes, so the P&L makes sense without re-coding.
You do not map 400 suppliers by hand
Link obvious matches pairs everything whose names already agree, in one pass, and leaves you the handful that genuinely need a decision. What exists on one side only can be created on the other — a supplier into Xero, or a Xero contact into SmarteBuild — without leaving the screen.
For a first set-up there is import all from Xero and export all to SmarteBuild, and the finished mapping downloads as a CSV if your bookkeeper wants to check it away from the screen.
Access is per user
A user needs the Xero integration permission on their account. Grant it to whoever does the books, not to everyone.
Auto connect tenant when needed reconnects without prompting each time — worth switching on if you use it daily.
Coming to the Builder plan
The same thing again, for builders who keep their books in QuickBooks rather than Xero: supplier bills and purchase orders go across from SmarteBuild, so the invoice is typed once. Accounts match to your cost codes, suppliers to your QuickBooks suppliers, and jobs to QuickBooks classes.
It is built and working. What it is waiting on is Intuit's app review, which every application connecting to QuickBooks has to pass before other people's files can be connected. We will not put a date on it, because Intuit does not give us one.
Worth knowing before you plan around it. It needs QuickBooks Online Essentials or above — Simple Start cannot take supplier bills at all, so there is nothing for us to send to. Purchase orders and job tracking need Plus; on Essentials the bills still go across, without a job on each line. Whoever connects it has to be an administrator on the QuickBooks file.
On QuickBooks and weighing us up? Tell us and we will let you know the day it opens, rather than you having to keep checking.
Orders that arrive from you, not from a no-reply address
Purchase orders, tender invitations and progress claims all go out by email. They should come from your own address, land in your own Sent folder, and be repliable. Connecting your mailbox is what makes that true.
Office 365 and Outlook
Send through your Microsoft 365 mailbox using your mail server details —
smtp.office365.com with an app password. Mail goes out from your address
and lands in your own Sent Items.
Signing in to Microsoft with one click, instead of an app password, is not switched on yet. When it is, this page will say so.
Gmail and Google Workspace
Authorise SmarteBuild against your Google account once. No password is stored, and sent mail appears in your own Sent Mail.
SMTP via smtp.gmail.com also works, and needs an app password with
two-step verification switched on first.
Google has not finished reviewing SmarteBuild, so the first time you connect, Google warns that the app is unverified and you have to choose to continue. It is a review queue, not a fault, and it is in progress.
Either way, the password never reaches us. An app password is one you create inside your own Microsoft or Google account for a single application, and can revoke there without changing the password you sign in with. Microsoft and Google have both progressively restricted plain account passwords in third-party applications, and in some Microsoft tenants they are blocked outright.
More than mail
The same Google and Microsoft connections cover documents, so drawings and job files move between SmarteBuild and the storage your team already uses.
A closer look at integrations
Connected once, then out of the way.
What it connects to
Nothing in SmarteBuild is an island — that is the point of it. Integrations reads from and feeds into these.
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Expenses & Invoices
Match invoices to orders and watch cost-to-date against budget
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Purchase Orders
Raise orders straight from the BOQ and send them without re-keying
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Suppliers
One supplier list across every job, with their products and rates
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Documents & Drawings
One register, proper revisions, formal issue and a record of who has what
Want the detail?
The help centre documents Integrations step by step, with worked examples — written for people using it, not for a brochure.
Start with one job and see
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