Milestone Payments Using a Xero Integration

This guide explains how a payment batch moves from creation through to reconciliation, across Tahua, Xero, and your bank, for milestone payments.

This covers Milestones that aren't tied to a Contract. If your Milestones are part of a signed Contract, see Contract Execution & Milestone Payments instead — Bills in that flow also apply the correct Xero Tracking Option automatically.

Step 1 — Applicant submits milestone The applicant completes their milestone and submits it for review via Tahua.

Step 2 — Admin reviews milestone An admin reviews the submission in Tahua to assess whether it meets the required criteria.

Step 3 — Admin approves milestone Once satisfied, the admin approves the milestone. This triggers two parallel tracks: the payment batch process and the Xero billing process.

Step 4 — Payment Batch is created A Payment Batch is created in Tahua and the approved milestone is assigned to it.

Step 5 — Admin exports Batch Payment The admin exports the Batch Payment file from Tahua, which is then imported by Finance and sent to the Bank for processing.

Step 5b–5c — Bank processes payments Finance imports the batch into the banking system. The Bank processes the individual payments to applicants.

Step 6a — Contact created in Xero In parallel with the batch process, a Contact record is created in Xero for the applicant (if one doesn't already exist).

Step 6b — Bill created in Xero A Bill is created in Xero for the milestone.

Step 7 — Xero imports payment info from Bank Feeds Once the Bank has processed the payment, Xero automatically pulls in the transaction data via Bank Feeds.

Step 8 — Finance reconciles payment against Bill Finance matches the incoming bank transaction to the open Bill in Xero, completing the reconciliation.

Step 9 — Payment created against milestone in Tahua Following reconciliation, a payment record is created against the milestone in Tahua.

Step 10 — Applicant notified and milestone updated The applicant receives a payment notification email and the milestone status is updated in Tahua. The process is complete.