Xero backup
Caryvane backs up Xero organisations — invoices, bills, payments, bank transactions, contacts, attachments, payroll, fixed assets, projects and Xero Files — into the customer's own storage, keeping every version so the books can be seen as they stood on any date.
Connect an organisation #
- Connectors → choose the customer → in the Xero card, Connect Xero. Xero opens in a new tab.
- Sign in to Xero and tick the organisations to back up. Each one is connected, and billed, separately. Close the tab and refresh the card.
- On each organisation's row, Choose storage: a cloud storage target of the customer's (S3, Wasabi, Azure and so on — not an SMB share or local folder, as the backup runs in the cloud), a folder, and how long to keep history (seven years by default). Use the folder icon to browse the storage or create a folder. Start backing up begins the first backup straight away.
Each organisation gets its own folder, named after it, inside the folder you chose. Nothing is installed at the customer.
What is captured #
- Sales invoices, bills, credit notes, quotes, purchase orders, repeating invoices, payments, overpayments, prepayments, batch payments, bank transactions and transfers, manual journals.
- Contacts and groups, the chart of accounts, items, tax rates, tracking categories, currencies, budgets, users and organisation settings.
- Attachments on all of those, and the Xero Files library.
- Payroll (UK), fixed assets and projects, where the organisation uses them.
- Xero's trial balance, every run.
Every change is kept as a new version; nothing is overwritten.
How long history is kept. The period set when choosing storage (seven years unless you change it, never less than 30 days) decides how far back you can browse. Once a week, versions that no date inside the period could show are removed from the storage: an old version that was replaced before the period began, and a record that left Xero before it. The latest copy of every record is always kept, however old.
The general ledger itself is not available to backup apps on Xero's standard plans — see what cannot be put back.
How long it takes #
The first backup captures everything, and Xero limits how many requests an app may make each day for each organisation, so a busy organisation's first backup takes several days. Records come first and attachments after, so the books are complete before the receipts. The row on the Connectors page shows progress; a run that stops at Xero's daily limit shows Partial and carries on in the next run — that is normal. After the first backup, each night's run fetches only what changed; changes to invoices and contacts can also be picked up between nightly runs, as Xero reports them.
Browsing and restoring #
Browse on the organisation's row opens the backup: every record type, searchable, as at any date you choose, with each record's history. To get data back into Xero, see Restore Xero data.
What it costs #
Xero backup is billed on its own invoice line, never from cloud credits. There are two parts: a monthly fee for each organisation, and Xero data above an allowance. Storage is not charged by us: the backup lives in the customer's own storage.
| Part | How it works |
|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Per organisation, from the day its backup starts (when storage is chosen and the first backup begins) until it is disconnected. Part months are charged pro-rata by day. |
| First backup | Up to 5 GB of Xero data free per organisation while its first full backup runs. This is on top of the monthly allowance. When the first backup completes, the free 5 GB ends, even if less of it was used. |
| Monthly allowance | From the day its backup starts, each organisation adds 1 GB a month to one combined allowance, shared by every organisation on the same invoice: the allowance is 1 GB × the number of organisations. For an MSP that is across all its customers. An organisation's first part month adds a pro-rata share, as its fee does. |
| Over the allowance | The total over the combined allowance is rounded up to the next whole GB, once, on the invoice, not per organisation, and charged per GB. |
| The month | Data is measured by calendar month, from 00:00 (UTC) on the 1st to the end of the month, as Xero measures it. The invoice raised on your billing day covers the previous whole calendar month, fee and data. |
An example. An MSP has five organisations backed up for the whole of a month. The combined allowance is 5 × 1 GB = 5 GB. Between them they downloaded 5.4 GB from Xero that month, which is 0.4 GB over, so the invoice charges 1 GB. Had one organisation used 5.4 GB and the others nothing, the charge would be exactly the same: the allowance is shared.
The rates per organisation and per GB are set on your Caryvane account. Partners: they are in your partner agreement. Ask us if you are not sure.
Why Xero data is charged #
Xero charges apps for the data they take out of Xero. Since March 2026, Xero's prices for apps like ours are based on how much data the app downloads from Xero's API (Xero calls it egress). Every record, attachment and Xero Files document a backup downloads is billed to Caryvane by Xero, so we pass that cost on, at the level the data actually moves. The free first-backup allowance and the monthly allowance cover the normal case. The per-GB charge only applies where an organisation sends a lot of new data in a month, for example thousands of new receipts, or a large Xero Files library.
"Data" means what the backup downloads from Xero: records, attachments and Files documents. The backup measures it as it goes, and the figure tracks Xero's own count for our app closely. Browsing, exporting or restoring from the backup reads the customer's storage, not Xero, so it costs nothing in Xero data.
Who can see the backup #
Admins and Managers can connect organisations and browse and export the backups. Finer control (a dedicated Xero role, and access per organisation) is planned.
Disconnecting #
Disconnect on the organisation's row stops its backups, removes Caryvane from the organisation in Xero, and ends its billing from that day. Everything already backed up stays in the customer's storage and can still be browsed and exported, with no charge, for as long as the customer's Caryvane account is open, even if they have no other Caryvane products. The latest copy of every record stays, and older versions follow the organisation's history period as before.