The problem
A common reason why Sellar is unable to create an invoice on Xero is because the contact in Xero has been archived. This can happen in the following manner:
The customer is in your active contacts list on Xero.
The Sellar-Xero integration is set up, and Sellar associates the customer on Sellar with their Xero contact ID.
At some point in the future, you or one of your team archive that customer contact in Xero.
That customer places an order on Sellar. Sellar is unable to create the invoice on Xero because they don’t allow us to do that for archived contacts.
👉 The Sellar team will get notified when this specific error is received back from Xero. We will inform you when this happens.
#1 - the simple solution
The first step when this happens is to:
Go to your Xero account.
Select Contacts, then Archived.
Locate the customer in question and select Restore.
If this restoration succeeds, you’ll then have to create the invoice that Sellar was unable to create for you manually. However, with the contact now un-archived, Sellar will be able to create all future invoices automatically for that customer.
Should you be unable to restore the contact on Xero, follow this solution 👇
#2 - the less simple solution
You may have attempted the solution above and seen this message:
In this scenario, a second contact with the same name and details has been created in your active contact list on Xero. Restoration fails because of an exact name match.
Here’s how to handle this situation:
Go to the more-recent contact in your active contacts list in Xero: Contacts → All.
Select the contact and click Edit.
Change their name to something different. For example, append ‘new’ at the end of their name (don’t worry, you’ll change this back later).
Navigate back to the corresponding archived contact and select Restore. This should now succeed.
We will now merge the transaction history for these contacts into one. Doing so will archive one of the contacts and leave the other in your active list. You can choose either contact to become the new single source of truth within your Xero account. A useful way to decide is to inspect both customer contacts and their respective details. For example, the previously archived contact may have a more complete profile on Xero that you wish to keep.
Once decided, select the contact you wish to archive.
Select the three dot menu, then select Merge.
Search for the other contact and select it. Note the message Xero presents you with about the contact you’re about to archive.
Navigate back to Contacts → All → Your customer contact.
Inspect the contact ID for this customer. This may now differ from the contact ID Sellar has reference to. Follow this quick guide to find and update the contact ID on Sellar:
How do I find my customer’s ‘contact ID’ in Xero?