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Connect Xero

Step 1 of setting up Kudos, and the shortest. Two minutes.

Nothing is sent to any of your clients until you finish step 6.

What this step does

Kudos watches your Xero for invoices you send, and asks those clients for a review. To do that it needs your permission to read your Xero, which you give on Xero's own screen rather than here.

You are never asked for your Xero password. Xero asks you to approve Kudos, and tells you exactly what it is approving.

What Kudos can see, and what it can never do

These are the exact permissions requested, in plain English.

Xero calls it	What it means
`openid`, `profile`, `email`	Who you are, so the connection is attached to the right account
`accounting.invoices.read`	Read your invoices, so Kudos knows when you have invoiced someone
`accounting.contacts.read`	Read your contacts, so Kudos has the client's email address to write to
`offline_access`	Keep the connection alive, so you do not have to re-approve it every half hour

Every one of those is read-only. Kudos cannot write anything to your Xero. It cannot create, edit, void or delete an invoice, cannot change a contact, cannot touch a payment or a bank feed, and cannot see your payroll, your bank accounts or your reports. Those permissions are not requested, so they cannot be used.

If you want to check this rather than take our word for it, the consent screen Xero shows you lists the permissions itself. Read it before you approve.

The steps

On step 1, press Connect Xero.
Sign in to Xero if you are not already.
Tick one organisation. This is the part people get wrong, and the next section is about it.
Approve.

You are returned to Kudos, and step 1 shows your connection and the organisation's name.

One organisation at a time

Kudos connects to one Xero organisation per account. If you tick two on the consent screen, the connection is refused with:

Kudos can connect one Xero organisation at a time. Start again and choose a single organisation.

Nothing is saved when that happens, so just start again and tick one.

If your practice runs several entities in Xero, decide which one raises the invoices your clients actually see, and connect that. Kudos asks for reviews after an invoice, so an entity that does not invoice clients has nothing for it to act on.

If you genuinely need two entities both collecting reviews, that is two Kudos accounts today, one per organisation. Email support before you set the second one up, because the once-a-year promise is counted per account and a client invoiced by both entities could otherwise hear from you twice.

If you are an accountant with client organisations in Xero, connect your own practice organisation, not a client's. Kudos asks your clients for reviews of your practice.

What actually triggers a review request

Not every invoice, and not the moment you create one.

Kudos acts when you mark a sales invoice as sent to the client. A draft invoice does nothing. A bill you receive does nothing. If Xero has not recorded that the invoice went to the client, Kudos waits about a day and then proceeds on the invoice being approved.

Nothing happens retrospectively. Connecting does not go back through your invoice history, which is deliberate: it would email your entire client list at once. Kudos starts from your next invoice.

"Needs reconnecting"

Your connection can stop working. The usual causes are somebody removing Kudos from the Xero organisation, a Xero password or access change, or the connection simply going stale.

The fix is always the same: press Reconnect Xero and approve again. Nothing else clears this state, and there is no setting to toggle. Reconnecting takes the same two minutes as connecting did.

Two things worth knowing:

Kudos fails safe. If it cannot recognise the state of your connection, it says "Needs reconnecting" rather than claiming everything is fine. Occasionally that means you reconnect something that was already working, which costs you one consent screen. The alternative is a practice that has silently stopped sending and does not know.
If you reconnected and chose a different organisation, you can end up with two live connections, and Kudos will keep saying "Needs reconnecting" until that is resolved. Reconnect and choose one organisation. If it persists, email support.

Turning it off

There is no disconnect button in Kudos, but you can stop the emails yourself at any time.

To pause, go to Settings, then Sending, and press Pause sending. Nothing goes out until you press Resume sending. Anything already waiting is kept and goes out when you resume. You do not have to set anything up again afterwards.
To remove our access entirely, revoke it in Xero: Settings, then Connected apps, then remove Kudos. We lose access immediately and cannot see a new invoice.

Pausing is done by whoever owns your Kudos account. A staff member on the same account will be told so rather than left guessing.

What each message means

What you saw	What to do
Xero is connected.	Nothing. Step 1 is done.
You cancelled the Xero connection. Nothing was changed.	You pressed cancel on Xero's screen. Start again when you are ready. This is not an error.
Kudos can connect one Xero organisation at a time. Start again and choose a single organisation.	You ticked more than one. Start again and tick one.
No Xero organisation was authorised. Start again and tick the organisation you want to connect.	You approved without ticking anything. Start again and tick one.
That Xero organisation is already connected to another Kudos account.	Somebody else, or an earlier account of yours, already connected this organisation. Email support and say which organisation it is.
You were signed out before the connection finished. Sign in and try again.	Your Kudos session expired part-way through. Sign back in and start again.
That connection link was not valid. Start the connection again from this page.	The link expired or was opened out of order. Start again from the setup page rather than reusing a link.
Too many connection attempts. Try again in an hour.	Wait an hour.
We could not start the Xero connection. Try again; if it keeps happening, contact support.	A fault on our side or at Xero. Try again in a few minutes.
The Xero connection did not complete. Try again; if it keeps happening, contact support.	As above. If it happens twice, email support rather than trying a third time.
Not connected	No connection exists yet. Press Connect Xero.
Needs reconnecting	See the section above. Press Reconnect Xero.
Connected (unknown organisation)	Connected and working. The organisation name was not captured, which is normal for older connections. Nothing to fix.

If you are using an AI assistant

What it can do for you

Explain any of the four permissions in more detail
Help you work out which of your Xero organisations to connect
Explain why a message appeared and what to do next

What it cannot do

Sign in to Xero or approve the consent screen. That needs your Xero login, and you should not give it one. This step is yours.

A useful thing to ask it:

Kudos is asking for accounting.invoices.read, accounting.contacts.read and offline_access on my Xero. Explain exactly what each one lets it do, and confirm whether any of them would let it change anything in my accounts.