Cart

← All guides

Bexio module · User guide

Customers, articles and invoices between FreeScout and Bexio

The Bexio module connects FreeScout directly with your company's Bexio account. Customers and articles are thereby available in FreeScout. Changes you make in FreeScout are transferred to Bexio. No separate copy arises that could drift away from the current data over time.

The idea behind it is simple: you should not have to keep switching between two programs to see, next to a ticket, who the customer is, what was agreed and what can be invoiced.

Every 5 minutes customers and articles sync automatically
A reliable data basis Bexio remains the leading system for customer data
Four languages German, French, Italian and English
Invoice directly work done becomes an invoice in Bexio

Setting up the connection

The connection is set up once by an administrator and usually takes about five minutes. Until it has been established, no customers or articles from Bexio are visible in FreeScout.

Create a Bexio appCreate a new app at developer.bexio.com. As the redirect address, use exactly the address FreeScout shows under Manage → Bexio → Settings.
Store ID and API keyEnter both values under Manage → Bexio → Settings and save them. They are stored encrypted.
Confirm accessConnect takes you to Bexio. There you confirm that FreeScout may access the Bexio account. Afterwards the settings page shows your company name under «Connected as».
Wait for the first syncIt starts by itself within five minutes. If you do not want to wait, trigger it immediately with Sync now.

The connection page is also the first place to look later when something is wrong. It shows the status of the connection and the exact error message of the last failed sync.

Customers

All customers recorded in Bexio — companies and private individuals — are found in FreeScout under Customers.

You can switch between a compact table view and a card view. The list can be filtered by company or person, category and sync status. The search covers names, customer numbers and email addresses.

Through the three-dot menu you decide yourself which columns are shown. FreeScout remembers this choice for your user account.

Clicking an entry opens the customer detail page with the areas Overview, linked contacts and additional addresses.

Changes go straight to Bexio

In edit mode you have the same central customer fields available as in the Bexio web portal.

When you save, the process runs in a clear order:

  • FreeScout sends the change to Bexio.
  • Bexio checks and confirms the change.
  • Only then does FreeScout adopt the new values.

If the transfer fails, the previous data stays and you get a concrete error message. Nothing is lost, and you can save the change again.

New customers are created straight in Bexio as well. A purely local intermediate step deliberately does not exist for customers. This prevents customer records from existing only in FreeScout, with two different sets of data arising.

Additional addresses

In the additional addresses area you can store as many delivery, invoice or contact addresses as you like — matching what the Bexio web portal offers.

Required are the recipient name, street, postcode, town and country. The countries come from the country list Bexio provides. Further details, among them an internal label, are optional.

Linked contacts

With linked contacts you map relationships between customer records, for example a contact person within a company, or two companies connected to each other.

You can select an existing Bexio customer and state the kind of relationship. Alternatively you create a new customer directly and link it in the same step.

The relationship appears on both customer detail pages and can be opened from either one.

The shared customer history

On the customer detail page you find a shared timeline with all linked activities. These include:

  • projects
  • tasks
  • time entries
  • assets
  • conversations
  • scratchpad entries

At a glance, the customer history answers the question: «What have we done with this customer so far?»

Articles

The goods and services catalogue taken from Bexio is found under Articles. It contains goods and services with their prices, tax rates and units.

Unlike a customer, an article may at first exist only locally in FreeScout. If you switch off syncing when saving, the article is not yet transferred to Bexio. The sync status then reads «not synced».

With Sync to Bexio you can create a matching article in Bexio at any time later. That helps, for instance, when you want to test or prepare an article without making it available in the accounting straight away.

Groups, units and tax rates

Under Manage → Bexio → Article settings you find the central building blocks of the article catalogue.

Building blockOrigin
Groupsare managed locally in FreeScout and serve internal organisation
Unitsare synced with Bexio, for example piece, hour, kilometre, year, month or flat rate
Tax ratesare synced with Bexio, including their period of validity

An expired tax rate is not deleted. With Close it is given an end date instead. Older invoices thereby remain traceable with the tax rate that applied at the time.

Creating invoices

Under Finances, the work documented in projects, tasks and time entries is collected. From it you can prepare an invoice and then transmit a real invoice to Bexio.

Several options are open to you:

  • Completed projects and tasks can be invoiced fully or in part.
  • Open time entries of the same customer can be merged into one collective invoice.
  • The invoice list shows all previous invoices and their current status.

A new invoice always begins as a draft. You can check the items, add to them and edit them. Only with Send to Bexio does it become an invoice in Bexio.

Later status changes — paid or cancelled, for example — are taken over from Bexio.

The automatic sync

Customers and articles are synced in the background every five minutes. Nobody has to be logged in to FreeScout for that.

On each run, changes from Bexio are fetched and local changes are transferred to Bexio.

If a sync fails, the last successfully synced state remains. The error message is shown on the connection page, and the next automatic run tries the transfer again.

With Sync now you can start the sync manually at any time.

Languages

The Bexio module is fully available in four languages: German, French, Italian and English.

The language is set separately for each user account. You find the setting under Account → Your Profile → Language. After saving, the interface is shown in the chosen language immediately.

Good to know

Bexio holds the customer data

Bexio is the leading system for customer data. Customers can therefore not be edited independently of Bexio.

If Bexio is temporarily unreachable, no customer changes can be saved during that time. This deliberately prevents two different sets of data arising that would later have to be merged at some effort.

Deleting only removes the link

If a customer is removed, the projects, tasks, time entries and assets connected to them remain. They only lose their assignment to the customer record.

Work already done and documented is not lost.

Bank details stay in Bexio

Bank details are neither read nor edited by the module. The Bexio web portal remains the right place to manage them.

Not getting anywhere with this? Support

Good to know

Frequent questions

Everything you should know about our modules, licences, updates and support before you buy.

Why does my purchased FreeScout module show an expiry date?

With your purchase you get the module plus twelve months of support, security updates and new features. The expiry date shown refers to those included services — not to your right to use the module at all.

What happens when my licence expires?

The module you have installed keeps working. Once the licence has expired, though, no new security or feature updates arrive and the included support can no longer be used.

You decide for yourself whether to renew the licence or to keep using the installed module without further updates, at your own responsibility.

Others promise lifetime updates. Why don’t you?

Technologies, security requirements and dependencies keep changing. What works reliably today can be outdated or unsupported tomorrow. Good software therefore needs continuous care, testing and development.

Rather than tie you to a permanent subscription, we leave you the choice: renew your licence, or keep using the installed module without further updates, at your own responsibility.

Do I need your LaStore module?

No, but the LaStore module connects your FreeScout instance with the modules you bought, and it brings several advantages:

  • installation with one click
  • automatic detection of available updates
  • easy updating right inside FreeScout
  • verification of the package signature
  • protection against module packages altered or tampered with unnoticed

Our modules do not use the normal update process, because it is not secure. The LaStore module verifies each of our modules before updating. An attacker therefore cannot deliver forged, dangerous updates. Without this module the verification is up to you, and it is a manual process.

without LaStorewith LaStore, autopilot offwith LaStore, autopilot on
learns about new versionsnoyes, dailyyes, daily
installsby hand from the portalat the press of a buttonovernight, without you
verifiedby you, via shasum -a 256yesyes
Do I really get the complete source code?

Yes. Our modules are provided under the AGPL-3.0 licence. The module as delivered contains the complete source code, which you can inspect and adapt within the terms of that licence.

On how many FreeScout instances may I use the module?

One licence covers one active FreeScout instance. Two free server moves are included on top of that.

If an old server is no longer in use, the system releases its activation automatically after 90 days. An instance that is unreachable or already deleted is therefore not counted against your licence for good.

Can I return a module I bought?

You have a 14-day right of return. It ends as soon as you activate the module — not already when the licence key is delivered to you.

So activate the module only once you have finally decided to use it. For consumers in the EEA, the statutory provisions on the right of withdrawal for digital content apply in addition.

Who issues my invoice?

Payment is handled by Paddle. Paddle acts as Merchant of Record and therefore as the seller. That is why Paddle appears as the issuer of the invoice, and possibly also as the payee on your card or bank statement.

Does a module need other FreeScout modules?

That depends on the product. Some modules work entirely on their own and offer additional features when other modules are present. Others have hard dependencies.

The slot finder, for example, strictly needs the Calendar module, because the available appointments are worked out from the calendars kept there.

Required and optional dependencies are stated on each product page.

What can I do if something doesn’t work?

We test our modules carefully. Even so, a feature may not behave as expected in a particular environment.

Every module comes with a detailed guide. If that does not get you any further, you can open a support ticket. Describe the problem briefly and the steps you have already taken — we are glad to help.

Pay securely, worldwideYour payment is handled securely by Paddle. You can pay from anywhere in the world, comfortably in your own currency — proper invoicing included.
Open, auditable, adaptableThanks to AGPL-3.0 you get the complete source code. You can audit the software, adapt it yourself and keep running it independently.
Two server moves includedYour FreeScout instance is moving? You can transfer your licence to a new server up to twice, free of charge, and keep using the module there.
Install once, stay current by itselfWith our LaStore module for FreeScout you install what you bought with a single click. Available updates are checked and installed automatically.

Play video

Playing establishes a connection to YouTube.

View image