Connecting Xero brings your own agency's accounting figures into aOS, so Agency Analytics and your reporting stay current without exporting anything. This is your books, not a client's — client sales channels are connected separately, per client.

aOS pulls your contacts, invoices, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Executive Summary. It's read-only access, so your books stay exactly as they are in Xero.

Owners and admins can connect Xero, along with anyone who has the Manage integrations permission. Your account owner can enable that permission on any user in Settings.

You'll sign in to Xero as part of the flow, using a login that reaches the organization you're connecting.

Right away: aOS pulls the current month's Profit & Loss the moment you connect, so you'll have figures on screen within a few minutes.

Your history: this is a step you run, not something that happens on its own. Go to Agency Analytics → Setup, set the date you started using Xero, and start the sync. aOS pulls a month at a time from that date forward, up to five years.

Leave that page open while it runs. The sync works through your months one by one with a deliberate pause between each, because asking Xero for everything at once hits its rate limits and fails. You'll see a progress count as it goes. Navigating away stops it partway.

Coming back later picks up where you left off rather than starting over, since months already pulled are skipped. If any month fails, aOS retries it a few times before moving on.

Your Xero organization name appears as soon as you're connected.

If your Xero login reaches several organizations, aOS connects the one Xero returns first, so it's worth a quick look to confirm it's the one you want. Need a different organization? Contact support.

"Connection failed — try again"
Click Connect and run through it again. This usually appears when the Xero screen was cancelled, or the session expired partway through.

"No permission to connect integrations"
Ask your account owner to connect Xero for you, or to enable the Manage integrations permission on your user in Settings.

It says connected, but the Analytics tab is still empty
That's a separate issue — see Why is my Analytics tab empty?

Only recent months are showing
The history sync hasn't been run, or was interrupted. Go to Agency Analytics → Setup and start it, leaving the page open while it works through your months.

Figures have stopped updating
Check that Settings → Integrations still shows Xero as connected. If the connection was removed, or access was revoked in Xero, connecting again will pick it back up.

Go to Settings → Integrations → Xero → Disconnect.

Disconnecting clears the accounting data aOS has stored along with the credentials, and reconnecting later starts the five-year history fresh. Worth knowing if you're weighing it up as a quick fix for something small.