Xero and Dayforce integration

What moves between them

Employee and organizational unit data flows from Dayforce into Xero. When Dayforce employees or org units change, ml-connector polls Dayforce daily using date-range filters to detect new records, terminations, and transfers. Employee names and department assignments are synced to Xero contacts with tracking category assignments to map Dayforce org units to Xero tracking categories, enabling Xero's multi-dimensional coding. Payroll cost allocation details are read from Dayforce and stored for use in downstream accounting flows. Data flows one direction from Dayforce into Xero; Xero serves as the accounting record of truth and does not write back to Dayforce.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted. On the Dayforce side, it refreshes the OAuth token before the 1-hour expiry, retrieves the client-specific base URL at least daily via ClientMetadata, and polls the Employees and OrgUnits endpoints with date-range filters to detect changes on your sync schedule. On the Xero side, it validates all requests with the tenant-specific header and tracks the webhook signing key separately from the OAuth client secret, obtained from Xero Developer portal app settings. Because Dayforce is pull-only, polling happens on a predictable schedule tied to your payroll cycle rather than waiting for an event push. Xero's page-based pagination (100 records per page) is handled transparently. Org units are mapped to Xero tracking categories so that employee allocations land on valid dimensions, and the integration retries failed syncs with exponential backoff while maintaining a full audit trail of every record pushed to Xero.

A real-world example

A mid-sized services firm uses Xero for accounting and Dayforce for payroll across multiple offices and cost centers. Before the integration, the finance team manually entered employee headcount and cost center allocations into Xero's tracking categories each month, and payroll changes in Dayforce were not reflected in Xero until someone manually updated the contact list. With Xero and Dayforce connected, each new hire or transfer in Dayforce appears in Xero's employee contacts and tracking categories automatically, assigned to the correct office and cost center. Month-end reconciliation of labor costs to cost centers is no longer manual, and finance can report headcount and labor allocation by department directly from Xero without re-keying data from Dayforce.

What you can do

• •Sync Dayforce employees to Xero contacts with automatic assignment to Xero tracking categories by department or office.
• •Detect and sync Dayforce organizational unit changes and employee transfers daily, keeping employee cost center assignments current in Xero.
• •Bridge Dayforce's 1-hour OAuth token lifecycle and role-based permissions with Xero's webhook signing and tenant authentication.
• •Poll Dayforce daily using date-range filters to detect new hires, terminations, and transfers without relying on real-time webhooks.
• •Maintain a full audit trail of every employee record, department change, and cost allocation synced from Dayforce into Xero.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Xero and Dayforce?

Data flows one direction from Dayforce into Xero. Employee records, organizational units, and cost allocation details are synced from Dayforce to Xero. Xero serves as the accounting system of record and does not write back to Dayforce.

How does ml-connector handle Dayforce's 1-hour token expiry and daily URL refresh?

ml-connector tracks the token expiry time and refreshes the OAuth2 bearer token before it expires, avoiding authentication failures mid-sync. It also retrieves the client-specific base URL via the ClientMetadata endpoint at least once per day to ensure the optimized endpoint is always current and avoid redirect overhead.

How are Dayforce org units and employees mapped into Xero's tracking categories?

Dayforce organizational units are mapped to Xero tracking categories so that employee records inherit the correct department or office coding. When an employee transfers to a new org unit in Dayforce, their Xero contact is updated with the new tracking category assignment, ensuring payroll costs land on the correct dimension in Xero's multi-dimensional chart of accounts.