Why can my practice management system no longer push invoices into Xero?

A lock date is the first thing to check. Xero refuses any transaction dated on or before it, and a connected app is held to the same rule as a person, so the export is refused with the rest. Read the practice system's failed export list for wording naming the period lock date or the end of year lock date.

What is the difference between the period lock date and the end of year lock date?

They are two separate fields, and the failed export names the one it hit. Cliniko reports the two failures separately, one naming the period lock date and one naming the end of year lock date, and the fix it gives for both is to change the lock date in Xero and resync. Xero's lock date settings carry two levels, one that stops every user except those with the adviser role and one that stops advisers as well, and which label belongs to which level was not read from Xero for this page.

Should I move the lock date or re-date the invoice?

It turns on whether the period's activity statement has been lodged. If it has not, moving the lock and posting on the real date keeps the document in the month it belongs to. If it has, posting into that period changes figures behind a filed statement, and re-dating to the first open day with a note moves the transaction into the next period instead. That call belongs to whoever signs the statement.

Will resyncing after the lock date moves create duplicates?

Cliniko states that synchronising from a previous date will not double up, because the integration sends only what has not been synced. That is one vendor's statement about its own sync rather than a property of Xero, so confirm it in the system in use and read the invoice numbers in Xero once the resync has finished.

Why are payments still missing after I moved the lock date?

Because the backlog drains slowly. Invoices go across as they are created and payments only once they are allocated, and Cliniko states that Xero's API allows one payment to be sent each minute. A large held batch can take hours. Put the lock back once the receipts have finished landing rather than once the invoices have.

Xero how to

Xero lock dates and a practice software export that will not land

A Xero lock date refuses any transaction dated on or before it, and Xero treats a connected practice system as another user, so the export is refused too. The blocked document stays in the practice system. Someone has to choose: move the lock date, re-date the document to the first open day with a note, or hold it for the accountant.

Key facts

What a lock date stops: Adding, editing or approving any transaction dated on or before it, with a connected app held to the same rule as a person typing into the file⁵
How many locks there are: Two: one that stops every user except those with the adviser role, and one that stops advisers as well⁵
Who can move one: Only a user with the adviser role can set or change a lock date⁵
What Cliniko reports: Two separate failures, one naming the period lock date and one naming the end of year lock date, both fixed by changing the lock date in Xero and resyncing³
What Zanda reports: That an invoice date or its payment date sits inside the locked period, so the payment leg can fail on its own²
Zanda's fix: Remove or update the lock dates in Xero, disconnect and reconnect the integration, then export invoices and payments again²
What happens after the lock moves: Invoices go across as they are created and payments only once allocated, and Xero accepts one payment a minute, so a released batch drains slowly¹
Resyncing from an earlier date: Cliniko states a resync from a previous date will not double up, because it sends only what has not synced⁴

What a lock date actually stops

A lock date is a line in time drawn across a Xero organisation. Transactions dated on or before it cannot be added, edited or approved. Most explanations stop at that, because for a person it is the whole story: you get a message, you ask the adviser, the adviser moves the date.

The part that matters to a practice is that Xero does not hold a connected app to a softer rule. A locked period closes to the practice management system in the same way it closes to somebody typing into the file by hand.

Xero treats the connected apps like Hubdoc, Dext, ApprovalMax, Cin7, or Stripe, Paypal, and Square just like regular users. If you lock a period, those apps can't push data into Xero for that period either.⁵

So a lock date is not only a control on the accountant's own file. It is a control on the nightly export out of the practice system, and a practice usually learns that from a failed sync notice rather than from the lock date screen.

Two locks, and two sets of names

There are two locks rather than one. The first stops every user except those holding the adviser role. The second stops everybody, advisers included. Only a user with the adviser role can set or change either of them, which is why a practice manager holding a failed export cannot clear it alone.

The softer lock leaves an adviser able to post into the closed period, so a bookkeeper carrying that role can still put a correction through.
The harder lock closes the period to advisers as well, so nobody in the file can post into it until somebody moves the date.
Whether a connected app can post through the softer lock is not answered by either practice system's help centre. Both describe the export failing and both tell the practice to change the lock date in Xero.

The names shift depending on where you are standing. Cliniko reports a period lock date and an end of year lock date, which is the wording a practice sees on the failed export. Xero Central settles where the dates are set, in the Accounting menu under Accounting settings, then Financial settings, then Lock Dates. Whether Xero prints the same two labels on that screen is left in the open questions.

The wording each system reports

The exact wording is worth knowing, because it is the quickest way to tell which of the two locks you have hit and which system is reporting it.

What each practice system reports when a lock date refuses a document³²

System	What it reports	What it tells the practice to do
Cliniko	The document date cannot be before the period lock date.	Change the lock date in Xero, then resync the invoices from Cliniko.
Cliniko	The document date cannot be before the end of year lock date.	The same instruction, against the year end field rather than the period one.
Zanda	An invoice date or its payment date are within the locked period when changes to the transactions are not allowed.	Remove or update the lock dates in Xero, disconnect and reconnect, then export invoices and payments again.

Zanda's wording carries a detail Cliniko's does not: it is the invoice date or the payment date. An invoice that went across in June can still fail in July, because the payment allocated against it is dated inside the lock. That is the case an allied health practice meets when funder money lands after the period the service belongs to.

Following the blocked document

A refused document stays where it was raised. It sits in the practice system and out of Xero, which both vendors treat as a document waiting to be exported again rather than one that vanished. What follows is a queue, and a queue only moves when somebody decides something.

Plate 1What happens to a practice software invoice dated inside a locked Xero period, from creation to the export that lands.

The choice the error message hides

Both vendors give the same instruction: change the lock date in Xero. It is a reasonable first answer and it is not the only one. Once a document has been refused there are three ways forward, and they are not equivalent.

Move the lock, post the document on its real date, and put the lock back. The month the document belongs to is the month it lands in, and every report of that month changes by the amount of the document.
Leave the lock alone and re-date the document to the first open day, with a note on it naming the date it actually carries. The closed month keeps the figures that were already reported, and the open month carries something that did not happen in it.
Hold the document out of Xero and put it to the accountant as a question. The practice system keeps it, the closed period keeps the figures it was reported on, and nothing moves until whoever closed the period answers.

Which one belongs to a given practice depends on what has already been done with the closed period. Nothing in the error message says that, which is why an unlock and a resync can look like a tidy fix and still move a number somebody has already reported to somebody else.

What each choice does to a lodged activity statement

The question that settles it is whether the period's activity statement has already gone in.

If nothing has been lodged for the period, moving the lock and posting on the real date is the simplest of the three. The reports were not final.
If the activity statement is lodged, posting into that period changes the figures behind a statement already filed, and the practice has to weigh whether the difference is worth an amendment.
Re-dating avoids that and moves the transaction into the next period instead, which is a decision about which period carries the revenue or the receipt rather than a formatting choice.
On a cash basis the payment date drives it and on an accrual basis the invoice date does, so one document can be a problem on one basis and not the other. Cash and accrual BAS in Xero sets out that split.

None of that is a call this page makes for a practice. It belongs to whoever signs the statement. The point of writing all three options down is that the person holding the failed export can put the question to them in one sentence, instead of unlocking the period and hoping nobody notices.

The backlog waiting after the lock moves

There is a second surprise on the other side of the unlock. Cliniko's integration article states that Xero's API allows only one payment to be sent across each minute, so a batch of held payments does not arrive at once.

Invoices go across as soon as they are created and payments only once they are allocated, so a released backlog usually arrives as all of the invoices and then a slow drip of receipts behind them. A practice that moves the lock late in the afternoon and checks an hour later can reasonably decide the fix did not work.

Put the lock back once the receipts have finished landing, not once the invoices have. A lock replaced too early leaves the payment legs blocked and the invoices sitting open in Xero, which is the same fault in a shape that is harder to spot.

Resyncing without doubling up

The other worry is duplicates. If the export is run again from a date before the blockage, does the practice end up with two of everything in Xero?

This will not double up on anything. It will simply see what has not been synced (due to the disconnection) and send it to Xero!⁴

That is Cliniko answering it for a reconnected integration, so it is a statement about one vendor's sync rather than a property of Xero. It is worth confirming in the practice system actually in use before a wide resync, and worth reading the invoice numbers in Xero afterwards either way, since the resync is the moment a duplicate would show up.

A lock cadence a practice can hold

A refusal like this is easier to head off than to unpick, and what heads it off is choosing when the lock moves rather than whether to lock at all. The cadence the bookkeeping trainer sets out is monthly once everything is reconciled, then out to the end of the reporting period once the activity statement is lodged, then to the financial year end once the annual return is filed.

Lock a month only once the funder deposits belonging to it have been matched, because a payment report reconciled late is the usual thing that arrives after the lock.
Give the practice system's export a clear run before the lock moves, rather than on the same afternoon.
Keep the failed export list somewhere a person actually looks, since a blocked document is silent everywhere else.
Agree in advance who may move a lock date, since the adviser role is the only one that can, and write down what happens to a document that misses the window.

What Ledger Map does with it

Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. A document dated inside a locked period is not re-dated quietly and is not dropped. It becomes a question carrying the same three options: post it on its own date once the lock moves, re-date it to the first open day with a note naming the day it belongs to, or leave it held until the accountant answers.

Nothing posts until the practice picks one. When it does, the deposit goes in as one balanced document set and one exact match is left in the bank feed for a person to accept. How it works shows the map and the approval step it goes through, and the two practice systems this page draws on are covered on Cliniko and Zanda.

Questions

Why can my practice management system no longer push invoices into Xero?
A lock date is the first thing to check. Xero refuses any transaction dated on or before it, and a connected app is held to the same rule as a person, so the export is refused with the rest. Read the practice system's failed export list for wording naming the period lock date or the end of year lock date.
What is the difference between the period lock date and the end of year lock date?
They are two separate fields, and the failed export names the one it hit. Cliniko reports the two failures separately, one naming the period lock date and one naming the end of year lock date, and the fix it gives for both is to change the lock date in Xero and resync. Xero's lock date settings carry two levels, one that stops every user except those with the adviser role and one that stops advisers as well, and which label belongs to which level was not read from Xero for this page.
Should I move the lock date or re-date the invoice?
It turns on whether the period's activity statement has been lodged. If it has not, moving the lock and posting on the real date keeps the document in the month it belongs to. If it has, posting into that period changes figures behind a filed statement, and re-dating to the first open day with a note moves the transaction into the next period instead. That call belongs to whoever signs the statement.
Will resyncing after the lock date moves create duplicates?
Cliniko states that synchronising from a previous date will not double up, because the integration sends only what has not been synced. That is one vendor's statement about its own sync rather than a property of Xero, so confirm it in the system in use and read the invoice numbers in Xero once the resync has finished.
Why are payments still missing after I moved the lock date?
Because the backlog drains slowly. Invoices go across as they are created and payments only once they are allocated, and Cliniko states that Xero's API allows one payment to be sent each minute. A large held batch can take hours. Put the lock back once the receipts have finished landing rather than once the invoices have.

Sources

Open questions

Xero Central settles where the lock dates are set and nothing further was taken from it here, so what a refused export reports and what happens behind it rest on a connected app's help centre and an Australian bookkeeping write up.
Xero's own field labels were not read off a live organisation. Cliniko reports a period lock date and an end of year lock date, and whether those are Xero's labels or the practice system's paraphrase is unconfirmed.
Whether a connected app can post through the lock that still allows advisers is not answered by either vendor's help centre. Both describe the export failing and tell the practice to change the lock date.
Whether to re-date or to hold a document blocked in a period whose activity statement is already lodged is a question for the practice and its BAS agent. This page lays out what each choice does and does not settle it.
What Xero does with a duplicate invoice number was not read from Xero, so this page asks a practice to read the invoice numbers after a wide resync rather than stating what happens to one.
No first-party figure exists for how often a lock date blocks an allied health sync. The corpus records four vendor sources for this pain point and no volume data, so the page states the mechanism and no frequency.

Integrate Cliniko with your Xero account
Cliniko. Retrieved 29 Aug 2026.
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Troubleshooting Xero exports
Zanda. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
An invoice failed to sync with Xero
Cliniko. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
My Xero integration got disconnected
Cliniko. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 28 Jul 2026.
primary
Lock dates in Xero, protect your reports from changing
Bookkeeping Tutor. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
secondary
Set up and work with lock dates
Xero Central. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026.
primary

Review

Last reviewed 3 Sep 2026 by Shane

General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.

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