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Account & tax mappings

Mappings tell TrueBooks where to post each kind of transaction in Xero, and which tax rate to apply. Get this right once and every future settlement posts correctly without you needing to think about it again.

The mapping screen

Open Accounts & Taxes from the navigation. The page lists every transaction category TrueBooks recognises across the left, with two dropdowns next to each — one for the Xero account code and one for the tax rate. Both lists are pulled live from your connected Xero organisation, so you'll only see codes and rates that genuinely exist in your books.

For brand-new UK workspaces, TrueBooks pre-fills sensible defaults so you can post your first settlement without configuring anything. Most sellers tweak two or three rows and leave the rest as-is.

Default UK mappings

Category	Account	Tax rate
Sales	200 — Sales	20% Output (OUTPUT2)
Shipping income	201 — Shipping Income	20% Output
Refunds	210 — Sales Returns	20% Output
Shipping refunds	211 — Shipping Refunds	20% Output
Inventory reimbursements	220 — Inventory Reimbursements	No VAT
FBA fees	620 — FBA Fulfilment Fees	20% Input (INPUT2)
Storage fees	621 — FBA Storage Fees	20% Input
Advertising	622 — Amazon Advertising	20% Input
Cost of goods sold	500 — COGS	20% Input
VAT collected on your behalf	820 — VAT	No VAT
Other	699 — Other Expenses	No VAT

If any of these account codes don't exist in your Xero organisation, the dropdown won't pick a default — you'll see "— select an account —" and need to pick one explicitly. Either create the missing code in Xero (then click Sync from Xero in TrueBooks) or pick whichever existing code you'd rather use.

The UK tax-code gotcha worth memorising

Xero's UK tax types use a suffix to distinguish income-side from expense-side rates:

OUTPUT2 — 20% VAT on income (sales, refunds, shipping income).
INPUT2 — 20% VAT on expenses, reclaimable (FBA fees, storage, advertising).
ZERORATEDOUTPUT — zero-rated income. Not ZERORATED; that one's for purchases. Posting with the wrong code returns a Xero validation error.
REDUCEDRATEOUTPUT — 5% income (rarely used; same suffix logic).
NONE — excluded from the VAT return entirely. Use this for things that aren't VAT-relevant at all (inventory reimbursements, customer credits Amazon adjusts internally).
REVERSECHARGES — reverse charges, used for international FBA fees and similar non-UK invoiced services.

The difference between NONE and ZERORATEDOUTPUT matters: zero-rated income still appears in Box 6 of your VAT return; NONE doesn't. They look similar in the dropdown but they aren't equivalent — confirm with your accountant before swapping.

Refining your mappings

You don't have to get this perfect on day one. The category-level mappings TrueBooks ships with will produce a clean settlement invoice for the vast majority of UK accounts. Two scenarios where you'll want to adjust:

You sell internationally and want a separate sales account per region. Today TrueBooks posts a single Sales line per settlement; if you'd rather see Amazon UK and Amazon DE in different accounts, that's a feature on our roadmap rather than a mapping change today.
You're not on the UK VAT scheme. Switch the Sales tax rate to whatever your jurisdiction uses (Ireland 23%, Germany 19%, etc.) and adjust the input/output side similarly.

What changes when you save

Mapping changes only affect future postings. Settlements already posted to Xero keep the codes they were posted with. To re-post a settlement under new mappings, open it from the Settlements list and use Repost — TrueBooks will void the existing Xero invoice and create a new one with the updated codes. There's a separate guide on posting, rolling back and reposting.