How it works

From clock-in to Xero payroll timesheet

A continuous cycle, four stages. A tech logs time in ConnectWise. The entry is approved. Connect Zero lifts it into a Xero payroll timesheet on the next cycle. The compliance dashboard updates. If the entry is missing past the threshold, an SMS reminder fires. No CSV, no retyping, no Friday chase.

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Data ownership

The data that moves between systems

ConnectWise is the source of truth for time entries. When a tech logs hours against a ticket, an agreement, or a project, the entry sits in ConnectWise as draft. The tech or their manager approves it. Approved entries are what Connect Zero reads. Connect Zero polls the ConnectWise REST API every six hours by default (configurable). For each new or edited approved entry since the last sync, it builds a Xero payroll timesheet line for the matching staff member and pay period, then writes it to the Xero Payroll API.

Xero remains the source of truth for the pay run itself. Connect Zero does not approve pay runs, does not lodge super, does not calculate PAYG. Those steps happen in Xero, by your payroll administrator, on your schedule. Connect Zero's job stops at the Xero timesheet line. If a Xero timesheet is edited after it lands (rare, but possible), Connect Zero does not overwrite; Xero wins for downstream payroll state. ConnectWise wins for the upstream time-entry source.

ConnectWise
Source of truth for time
  • Time entry input
  • Entry approvals
  • Ticket linkage
  • Billable rate context
Connect Zero
The bridge
  • Sync schedule
  • Staff mapping
  • Compliance tracking
  • SMS reminders
Xero
Payroll engine
  • Pay run execution
  • Tax and PAYG
  • Super lodgement
  • Leave balances
Connect Zero is the bridge, not a replacement. ConnectWise stays your source of truth for time. Xero stays your payroll engine. The middle layer is where the work happens.
The schedule

The schedule, in plain English

The default sync interval is every six hours. That means four cycles per day: 06:00, 12:00, 18:00, 00:00 (Adelaide time). On most days, most time entries flow through within six hours of being approved. The interval is configurable in your tenant settings, from hourly to twelve-hourly. Higher frequency is fine; the ConnectWise and Xero APIs both rate-limit gracefully, and Connect Zero respects their thresholds.

Setting the sync interval is a trade-off between freshness and API pressure. For most teams of 5 to 50 staff, six hours is the sweet spot. Teams of 50+ may want a longer interval (eight or twelve hours) to keep API call counts comfortable. Smaller teams can go as low as one hour without issues. Setup walks you through the choice.

06:00Pre-business cycle. Overnight edits flow before staff arrive.
12:00Mid-day cycle. Morning entries land before lunch.
18:00End-of-day cycle. Catches Friday-afternoon approval spike.
00:00Overnight cycle. After-hours entries posted before next morning.
Edge cases

Edge cases that show up in the real world

Mid-week edits

A tech edits an approved entry after it has already synced. The next cycle picks up the edit and updates the Xero timesheet to match. The audit log records the original entry, the edited entry, and the timestamp of each.

Pay-period boundaries

A time entry logged at 23:50 on a Sunday at the end of a fortnight is allocated to the correct pay period per your Xero payroll settings. Connect Zero reads your Xero pay calendar at sync time and uses the boundary rules Xero already enforces.

Restored backups (CDR-ID reuse)

Rarely, a ConnectWise restore can re-use a time-entry ID for a different actual entry. Connect Zero dedups against the entry's content fingerprint (staff ID, ticket ID, hours, date) not just the ID alone, so a restored entry that is genuinely different does not collide with the original.

Multi-org Xero

When you have multiple Xero organisations under one ConnectWise instance, per-staff mapping decides which Xero org each member's hours land in. The mapping is set at setup, can be edited per staff member, and can be bulk-imported from CSV.

Approval workflows

Only approved time entries sync. Draft, pending, and rejected entries are skipped. The compliance dashboard distinguishes "logged but not approved" from "not logged" so you can see where the bottleneck sits.

Connection drops, retries

API outages on either side trigger exponential back-off retries. Status surfaces on the dashboard in real time. Multi-hour outages catch up automatically on the next regular cycle. Nothing is lost.

Security and data handling

What we do with your data

Connect Zero stores tenant credentials and sync state in an AU-hosted database. ConnectWise API keys are encrypted at rest using AES-256. Xero is OAuth-2 with the standard 30-day refresh-token cycle. We never persist the actual content of time-entry notes or work descriptions, only the structured fields needed for payroll. The audit log retains sync events for 90 days, then purges. If you need a longer retention window for compliance reasons, configure it per tenant.

Connect Zero respects ConnectWise role-based access on its API tokens. We recommend a dedicated integration user in ConnectWise with permissions scoped to time-entry read and member read. For Xero, the OAuth scope is payroll.timesheets plus payroll.employees.read. If you revoke either credential from the source system, Connect Zero stops syncing on the next cycle and surfaces the failure on the dashboard.

What we store

The minimum to run the sync

  • Encrypted ConnectWise and Xero credentials
  • Sync state, watermarks, last-cycle stats
  • Audit log of sync events (30 to 365 days, by tier)
  • Staff-mapping table (CW member to Xero employee)
  • SMS reminder schedule and template
What we never store

Things we deliberately do not touch

  • Free-text work descriptions or ticket bodies
  • Customer PII beyond what is in the staff record
  • Pay rates, super balances, or tax info from Xero
  • The content of SMS replies from staff
  • Anything from ConnectWise outside time-entry tables

Read the setup guide

The setup walkthrough takes 10 minutes. Five steps, dry-run mode first, then live sync. Most customers are running a first cycle within an hour of signup.

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