Receiving invoices
E-invoicing runs both ways. Suppliers who are also on the network file invoices addressed to you, and those arrive here rather than by email. Where your accounting system is connected, they can be pushed straight into it as bills, so your purchase side is entered once — by your supplier.
How an incoming invoice reaches you
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| It arrives | A supplier files an invoice addressed to your TRN. It reaches TaxStar over the network. |
| Your entity is identified | From the address on the document — which is why your own TRN has to be right. |
| It is received successfully | It passed validation for your entity and is stored, ready to download. |
| It is synced to your system | Where that system is connected and can accept it, it appears as a bill. |
| The result is recorded | Received successfully, synced, or failed with a reason — per invoice, not per batch. |
Nothing here is on a schedule you control or have to trigger. Incoming documents are collected continuously; an invoice a supplier files in the morning is not waiting for a nightly run.
Why your own details have to be right
An incoming invoice is matched to your entity by the address the supplier put on it — which is built from your TRN. An entity whose TRN is wrong, or who has not finished onboarding, cannot be found, and the document has nowhere to go.
This is the same detail that makes your outgoing invoices work, so it is rarely wrong in practice. It is worth knowing as the cause when a supplier insists they sent something you cannot see.
Syncing bills into your accounting system
Where the entity has a live connection, a received invoice is synced to that system as a bill, and its status reads synced to xero (or your system). An entity with more than one system under the same TRN has it synced to its main connection only. If the sync fails — the connection has been revoked, the supplier does not exist there yet, the system rejected the document — that failure is recorded against the invoice with its reason, and the document itself is not lost.
A received invoice is yours whether or not it reached your accounting system. The sync is a convenience; the receipt is the compliance event.
An invoice received before you connect anything
This is the case worth being clear about, because the screen used to describe it in the platform's own terms and it read like a problem. It is not one.
A supplier can file an invoice to you the moment your entity is onboarded — before you have connected any accounting system at all. That invoice is received, stored and downloadable, and it is filed with the authority. The status reads received successfully and is shown in green, because nothing failed and there is nothing to fix.
| At the moment it arrives | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| A system is already connected | The invoice is received successfully, then synced to it as a bill automatically, with no action from you. If the sync fails — the connection was revoked, the supplier does not exist there yet — the reason is recorded against the invoice. |
| None is connected yet | The invoice is received successfully and stays here, complete and downloadable. Every invoice received after you connect a system is synced to it automatically. |
The onward sync into your accounting system is a convenience on top of the receipt, not part of it. An invoice that never reaches your ledger automatically is still yours, still filed, and still downloadable here — you would enter it by hand exactly as you did before e-invoicing.
Reconciliation
Reconciliation compares a date range in your accounting system against what reached TaxStar, so a gap is something you can see rather than something you discover at filing time. Pick the dates and it lists both sides.
Use it after a busy period, after a connection was re-authorised, or any time the totals in your own reports and the invoices filed here do not agree.
Related
The statuses used on received invoices are the same vocabulary as the sending side — see Sending invoices.