I see a Xero ID field in most tables – what is the purpose of these fields?

Most tables that upload to Xero will contain a “Xero ID” field, e.g.:

• _kf_XeroContactID in Contacts
• _kf_XeroInvoiceID in Invoices
• _kf_XeroProductID in Purchase Orders
• etc

These fields store Xero’s unique identifier for each Contact, Invoice, Purchase Order etc that you upload to Xero or download from Xero.

These operate in a similar way to a primary key field does in FileMaker. If there is a value in these fields that means that the Contact, Invoice etc has previously been uploaded (or downloaded from Xero) – i.e. that FileMaker record also exists in Xero. When uploading to Xero if the “Xero ID” field is empty a new record will be created in Xero, otherwise the Xero record that matches the “Xero ID” field will be updated.

N.B. as these Xero ID values should be unique make sure when you duplicate an Invoice, Contact, Bill etc that you clear out the value in these Xero ID fields (_kf_XeroContactID, _kf_XeroInvoiceID etc) otherwise you will run into issues when uploading as it will be attempting to update that record in Xero that matches the value in the Xero ID field.