Setting Up Clients

Creating a client record

Navigate to the Clients section from your sidebar and click "New Client." Enter the client's company name, primary contact details, and any notes that help your team understand the relationship. The client name is how they will appear across boards, invoices, and reports, so keep it consistent with how your team refers to them.

You can also add the client's industry, website, and physical address. While these fields are optional, they become useful for AI-powered insights and reporting later -- for example, the AI can group performance data by industry or flag trends specific to certain client types.

Linking Xero contacts

If you have connected Xero (see the Connecting Xero guide), you can link each client to their corresponding Xero contact. On the client detail page, click "Link Xero Contact" and search for the matching contact in your Xero organization. The search matches on company name, contact name, and email.

Once linked, invoices from Xero automatically appear in the client's financial tab, and the end-of-month invoicing engine can generate new invoices directly to this contact. Revenue, expenses, and profitability metrics also start flowing into the client's dashboard card. This link is the foundation of XeroFlow's financial reporting at the client level.

Configuring portal access

The client portal gives your clients a dedicated login to see their projects, approve deliverables, view invoices, and browse creative assets. To enable portal access for a client, go to their client detail page and open the "Portal" tab.

From here, you can invite client contacts by email. Each contact receives a separate login and can be assigned individual permissions:

Permissions are per-contact, so one client might have a marketing manager with full access and a CFO who only sees invoices. You can change permissions at any time without interrupting the client's session.

Setting up billing and retainers

The "Billing" tab on each client record lets you configure how you charge this client. You can set a monthly retainer amount, hourly rate, or mark the client as project-based billing. This information feeds into the end-of-month invoicing engine and helps XeroFlow calculate profitability.

For retainer clients, set the monthly amount and any rollover rules (whether unused hours carry forward). For hourly clients, set the default rate -- individual team members can have different rates configured in the Time section. The EOM engine uses these rates when auto-generating invoice line items.

Connecting ad accounts

If you manage digital advertising for a client, you can link their Meta Ads and Google Ads accounts to their client record. This lets XeroFlow pull in daily spend data, campaign breakdowns, and performance metrics that appear on the client's dashboard and feed into budget management.

On the client detail page, open the "Ad Accounts" tab and connect the relevant platform accounts. Once connected, spend data syncs daily and you can set budget caps that trigger alerts when campaigns approach their limits. This data also powers the AI anomaly detection system, which flags unusual spend patterns.

Next steps

With your clients configured, explore these guides to connect the financial and automation layers.