Opagio reads your financials so you don't have to re-key them. The fastest way to do that is a direct Xero connection: a one-time authorisation that lets the platform pull your profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance, and chart of accounts — read-only — and turn that ledger into a structured view of your intangible assets. This guide walks through the connection end to end: what you authorise, what syncs, where it lands, and how to manage the connection afterwards.
This is the technical companion to our product walkthrough on importing data into the Valuator. That guide covers the broader workflow — CSV uploads, QuickBooks, and the mapping layer. This one focuses on the Xero connection itself: the authorisation, the scopes, the sync, and the security model.
Connecting Xero to Opagio is a read-only OAuth 2.0 authorisation. Opagio can read your reports and chart of accounts; it cannot create, edit, or delete anything in your Xero organisation. You can disconnect at any time, and disconnecting never removes the data already imported.
Three things make the connection clean on the first attempt.
You must be able to authorise third-party apps for the Xero organisation you want to connect — typically an adviser, standard, or admin user. If you manage several Xero organisations under one login, you choose which one to connect during the flow.
The connection attaches to the company you are working in. If you have just signed up, complete the short onboarding first so there is a company to attach the ledger to.
Opagio reads what Xero reports. If your most recent months are not yet reconciled, sync now and re-sync later — re-syncing is a single click and overwrites nothing you have reviewed.
Opagio supports Xero, QuickBooks, and plain CSV upload. If your accounting system is not on that list, the CSV route accepts a general-ledger export from any package. This guide covers Xero; the data import guide covers the alternatives.
Inside the platform, go to Settings → Integrations. The Xero card shows the current state — not connected, connected, syncing, or needs attention — and a Connect button.
Selecting Connect sends you to Xero's own sign-in page (login.xero.com). You authenticate with Xero, not with Opagio, so your Xero credentials are never seen by or stored on the platform. This is a standard OAuth 2.0 authorisation-code flow.
OAuth 2.0 is the industry-standard protocol that lets you grant one application limited access to another without sharing your password. You approve a specific, named set of permissions on the provider's own site, and the provider hands back a token — not your login.
If your Xero login has access to more than one organisation, Xero asks which one to connect. Choose the entity whose financials you want Opagio to value, and confirm.
This is the part worth reading rather than clicking through. Xero shows you exactly what Opagio is requesting before you approve it. Every permission is a read scope — there is no write, update, or delete scope anywhere in the request.
| Scope | What Opagio can read | Why it is needed |
|---|---|---|
| Profit and loss report | Revenue, cost, and expense lines over time | The income base for asset-derived earnings and normalisation |
| Balance sheet report | Assets, liabilities, and equity positions | Tangible register, capitalised intangibles, and financial position |
| Trial balance | Account-level balances | Reconciles the reports and underpins chart-of-accounts mapping |
| Accounting settings | Chart of accounts structure and codes | Maps your GL accounts to the right financial lines |
| Contacts | Customer and supplier names | Supports customer-relationship and concentration analysis |
| Payroll employees | Headcount (region-gated) | Workforce sizing — requested only for UK, Australia, and New Zealand tenants |
| Offline access | A refresh token | Keeps the connection alive so you don't re-authorise on every sync |
If you ever see a connection request from a tool claiming to be Opagio that asks for write access to Xero — the ability to create invoices, edit transactions, or post journals — do not approve it. The genuine Opagio integration never requests write scopes. Reading your ledger is all it needs.
The payroll-employees scope is a special case. Xero accepts the scope request from any region, but Opagio only reads payroll headcount where Xero Payroll is actually available — the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. In every other region the scope is granted but the payroll endpoint is never called, which keeps the connection free of avoidable errors.
Approve the permissions, and Xero returns you to Opagio with the connection live.
Once the connection is authorised, Opagio pulls your data. The first sync is the largest because it reaches back through your history.
Up to 36 months of profit-and-loss and balance-sheet history, your trial balance, the full chart of accounts, your contact list, and — in supported regions — payroll headcount. Older organisations with several years of history still cap at the most recent 36 months, which is the window the valuation engine uses for trend and normalisation work.
While the sync runs, the Integrations card shows a syncing state. When it finishes, you get a sync summary: the periods covered, the report types retrieved, and anything Opagio could not read (a missing report permission, or a region where payroll is unavailable, for example). If a connection later goes stale — usually because authorisation was revoked on the Xero side — the card moves to a needs attention state and prompts you to reconnect.
A UK SaaS company on Xero connects in the afternoon. The first sync retrieves 36 months of P&L and balance-sheet reports, the trial balance, 412 chart-of-accounts codes, the contact list, and current payroll headcount. The sync summary confirms all report types were read, and the company's general ledger is ready to classify within two minutes.
Syncing is not the end — it is the start of the workflow. Your Xero data flows into several places in the platform, each building on the last.
Your GL codes are mapped to standard financial lines so revenue, cost, and overhead are read consistently regardless of how your accounts are named.
Expense lines are reviewed and classified, separating routine running costs from the investment spend that builds intangible value — the input to productivity and normalisation analysis.
The P&L and balance sheet feed a normalised view of earnings and a current financial position, the foundation for asset-derived valuation.
From there, your intangible assets are identified against the Opagio 12™ framework and valued, populating your Value Drivers Register™.
The point of the connection is that one authorisation feeds every downstream step. You map and review once; the same source data supports productivity analysis, the normalised P&L, asset discovery, and every valuation method without a second import.
Reviewing your general-ledger classification is the one step that benefits from your attention. Opagio proposes a classification; you confirm or adjust it. That review is what makes the resulting valuation defensible, because the assumptions are yours and they are recorded.
A connection is not set-and-forget, and Opagio is built so you stay in control of it.
| Task | How it works |
|---|---|
| Re-sync | Trigger a fresh sync from the Integrations card whenever your Xero data is updated — month-end close is the natural cadence |
| Check what synced | Each sync produces a summary of periods, report types, and any read issues; an audit log records connection events |
| Reconnect | If authorisation lapses, the card prompts you to reconnect — your imported data stays in place while you do |
| Disconnect | One click revokes Opagio's access; existing GL imports and valuations are retained, not deleted |
Disconnecting is worth understanding precisely. It revokes the token Opagio holds, so the platform can no longer read your Xero organisation. It does not remove the data you have already imported or the valuations built from it — those remain in your workspace. You can reconnect later and resume syncing without losing your earlier work.
Reading a company's full general ledger is a serious trust. The connection is built around a few firm principles.
Opagio holds personal and financial data under its Privacy Policy and Data Processing Agreement, and the security practices behind the platform are set out on the Security page. The short version: the connection is read-only, the tokens are encrypted, and you can sever access at any moment.
The Xero connection is designed so the worst-case answer to "what can Opagio do to my books?" is "read them." It cannot change a single figure, and the moment you disconnect, it cannot read them either.
A few situations come up often enough to name.
The connection is the on-ramp. Two minutes of authorisation replaces hours of re-keying, and from a single read-only link Opagio can map your accounts, classify your ledger, normalise your earnings, and value your intangible assets. For the full picture of what happens to the data once it is in, read Inside Opagio Reports and our guide to importing data into the Valuator. If you are weighing the connection against a manual export, the CSV route gets you to the same place from any accounting system.
When you're ready, open Settings → Integrations, connect your Xero organisation, and let the platform read the ledger so you can get on with understanding what your business is worth. You can also explore Opagio Intangibles or check the pricing plans before you commit.
For more on the terms used here, see our glossary entries on intangible assets and IAS 38, or the frequently asked questions about getting started.
Ivan Gowan is Founder and CEO of Opagio. He spent 25 years in fintech, including senior roles at IG Group, before founding Opagio to make intangible value measurable. Read more about the team on the Opagio team page.
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