Integrations

Connect the tools your club already uses. Every connection here runs in one direction only, and the page has two halves that point opposite ways. The accounting and mailing connections send your data out — the Xero feed puts your payments into your accounting file, and the Mailchimp sync keeps an audience in step with your consenting members. The Facebook Page and Google Calendar connections read in, once, when you're moving in from somewhere else: they bring content across as drafts and never post anything back. Credentials are stored encrypted either way.

Integrations is a Pro-plan page. The two import connections are also part of site migration, which isn't switched on for every organisation yet — while it's off you'll see them described but not usable, and they unlock by themselves when the feature launches.

Who can use this

Only organisation admins can see the Integrations page — it holds connections into your accounting and email systems, so moderator grants and council-position permissions deliberately don't reach it.

What's on the page

• Xero accounting feed — connect your Xero organisation, choose a bank account and income account, and each paid payment (registrations, tickets, shop, memberships, donations) arrives in Xero as a received bank transaction, roughly once a day. It replaces the manual "Xero bank statement CSV" upload from the Member payments page.
• Mailchimp audience sync — paste a Mailchimp API key, pick an audience, and members who have opted in to club emails are kept in it as subscribed contacts. Withdrawn consent, unsubscribes and bounced addresses are pushed as unsubscribed.
• Facebook Page — sign in to Facebook and pick a Page you administer. Its posts, photos and About text come across as drafts, once.
• Google Calendar — sign in to Google and pick one calendar. Its events come across as drafts, once.
• Build your own — a pointer to the REST API & webhooks page for anything bespoke.

Step by step

Connect Xero

1. Select Connect Xero and sign in to Xero when asked. Approve access for the organisation you keep the club's books in.
2. Back on the Integrations page, choose the Xero organisation, the bank account the feed should land in, and the income account each line should be coded to.
3. Set Feed payments from — only payments taken on or after this date are sent, and each payment is only ever sent once.
4. Select Save feed settings. From here the feed runs automatically about once a day; Sync now pushes immediately.

Connect Mailchimp

1. In Mailchimp, create an API key (Account → Extras → API keys) and paste it into the connect form. The key is verified before anything is saved.
2. Choose the audience to sync (picked automatically when you only have one).
3. Select Sync now for the first run, or wait for the daily sync.

Connect a Facebook Page

1. Select Connect a Facebook Page and sign in to Facebook. Approve access when asked.
2. Choose from the Pages offered. Only Pages you administer appear — the list comes from Facebook itself, not from anything typed on our screen, so a Page you don't manage can't be picked.
3. Your posts, photos and About text arrive as drafts. Read them on News, Pages and your photo galleries, then publish what you want.

Connect Google Calendar

1. Select Connect Google Calendar and sign in to Google.
2. Pick one calendar. Calendars you can only read are offered alongside ones you own — we never write to any of them.
3. Its events arrive as drafts on Events.

Disconnect any integration at any time — nothing further is sent or read, and we revoke our access at the other end and delete the stored keys. Contacts already in Mailchimp and transactions already in Xero are left untouched, and anything already imported stays: it's your content now.

Field reference

• Xero organisation — which Xero file receives the feed, when your login covers more than one.
• Bank account (feed target) — the Xero bank account the received-money transactions post to. Usually the account your payment provider settles into.
• Income account (line coding) — the revenue account each transaction line is coded to (e.g. 200 — Sales). Your treasurer can re-code individual transactions in Xero afterwards.
• Feed payments from — the earliest payment date the feed will pick up. Defaults to the day you connected, so historic payments aren't double-entered on top of an existing manual import.
• Mailchimp API key — ends with a data-centre suffix such as -us21. Stored encrypted; it is never shown again after saving.
• Audience — the Mailchimp list that receives your members.
• Facebook Page — which of the Pages you administer we read from. One at a time.
• Google calendar — which calendar we read events from. One at a time.

Tips & FAQ

• Amounts are net of refunds at the time they're sent. A payment refunded after it has fed into Xero is not adjusted automatically — reconcile that refund in Xero. Fully refunded payments are skipped entirely.
• The feed sends one currency. Each run posts payments in the currency of the first payment it finds, which is your club's usual one. A payment taken in a different currency is held back rather than posted into the wrong bank account, and the sync summary counts it, so a club that takes money in two currencies should reconcile the second one by hand in Xero.
• Dated on your club's calendar. A payment is posted on the date it was taken in your club's time zone, so money received early on 1 July lands in the new financial year.
• Sync summary says a payment could not be recorded? The payment reached Xero but ClubHelix could not note that it had been sent, so the next run may send it again. Check Xero for a duplicate of that transaction before the next sync.
• Who ends up in the Mailchimp audience? Only members with an active email opt-in for your organisation. Members who never opted in are not sent to Mailchimp at all, and accounts being deleted or anonymised are never exported.
• Sync says "Needs attention"? Xero sessions can expire if the feed can't run for a long period — reconnect from the same card; your account choices are kept.
• Will connecting Facebook post to our Page? No. It reads, once. We never post, comment or react on your behalf, and connecting doesn't keep the two in step afterwards — if you add a Facebook post next month it won't appear here unless you import again.
• Facebook didn't bring our events. Facebook restricts who may read a Page's events, and we may not be permitted to. When that happens the import says so and brings the posts, photos and About text across anyway, rather than failing the whole thing. Add those events by hand on Events.
• What about our Facebook Group, or our members? Neither comes across. A Group isn't a Page and isn't public in the same way, private albums aren't readable, and a Facebook Page has no member roster to take — your roster comes from Bulk import.
• Is anything published automatically? No. Everything an import writes is a draft until someone at your club publishes it, the same as Migration.
• What happens when we disconnect? We revoke our access at Facebook or Google and delete the stored keys. What we already imported stays with you.
• Something else you'd like to connect? The read-only REST API and signed webhooks on the API & webhooks page cover custom integrations.