Accounting software to accept payments: how to choose your setup

TL;DR

• Integrated payment accounting allows you to see updated card transactions, invoices, and bookkeeping records in the same place: no manual exports, no end-of-day reconciliation.

• Accounting software does not process card payments itself: it works alongside a payment provider that does, with transaction data flowing between them automatically.

• The practical benefit is accuracy and time. Reconciliation that once took an hour at month-end happens continuously in the background.

• Teya connects to Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage, so card payments settle overnight and feed into your accounts the next morning.

Monday morning, and the weekend's receipts need to go into the books. Your deli on the high street took £4,300 on Saturday and £3,800 on Sunday: a good weekend by anyone's measure. But you're sitting at a laptop with a bank statement, a card machine report, and a QuickBooks tab open, trying to make three sets of figures agree. It takes 45 minutes. It takes 45 minutes every Monday. That is 39 hours a year spent on a task that should not exist.

Integrated payment and accounting software fixes that 45-minute problem. More importantly, it eliminates subtle data-entry errors that derail your monthly cash flow and complicate HMRC compliance. 

Let's dive into how payment processing and accounting software work as one system, what to look for when choosing a combined setup, and how it keeps your books continuously ready for your accountant or Making Tax Digital (MTD) submissions.

Accounting software in payment management

Accounting software does not process card payments itself. Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage are platforms that record, categorise, and report on money that has already moved. 

Card payment processing occurs through a separate infrastructure: a payment gateway, a card machine, and a merchant account.

Including payments in your accounting software is usually one of two things. 

1. Accounting software with an invoice payment link, where you can send a client an invoice, and they pay it online, with the payment recorded automatically in the accounts. This is useful for service businesses invoicing clients. 

2. Accounting software connected to a payment provider via a direct integration or API feed, where card transactions made on your card machine flow automatically into the accounting platform, removing the manual import step.

For an established high-street retailer or hospitality business, the second type of integration is the one that matters most.

How payment synchronisation works in accounting software

When a payment provider and an accounting platform are connected, transactions flow in one direction: from the payment provider's system to the accounting software. Each transaction, such as amount, date, payment method, and often the line item, is pushed through the integration as it settles.

For Xero, this means your Teya card machine transactions appear in your bank feed automatically, with up to 12 months of history available on connection. For QuickBooks, the integration pulls up to 24 months of transaction history. Sage integration is also available. 

In practice, your reconciliation for Sunday's trading is already matched and waiting in your accounting software when you log in on Monday morning, no CSV exports or manual typing required.

The real benefit is accuracy. Relying on staff to copy figures from a card terminal slip leaves too much room for typos, missed refunds, or unrecorded void transactions. An automatic feed logs these cases instantly.

Transaction fees for integrated payment accounting

Accounting software subscriptions are a separate cost from payment processing fees. Xero's standard plans currently range from approximately £16 to £59 per month, depending on tier; QuickBooks from approximately £12 to £35 per month. These are bookkeeping tool costs — not payment processing costs.

Payment processing fees are determined by your merchant provider, completely independent of your software subscription. When assessing providers, ensure you are not paying an extra monthly "bridge" or integration fee just to enable the two systems to communicate.

Teya includes a Xero integration as standard, and new Teya members currently receive six months of Xero free (valued at up to £390). There is no additional integration fee.

Integrated payments vs third-party processors in your accounting software

For businesses that use accounting software with a built-in invoicing payment link — Xero Pay, QuickBooks Payments — the payment processing happens through that platform's own processor, at rates set by the software provider. This works well for service businesses sending invoices.

This model does not apply to brick-and-mortar businesses that take the majority of payments via a physical card machine. The card machine is the payment processor, and what matters is how cleanly and quickly the machine's transaction data reaches the accounting software.

A fragmented setup, with a card machine from one provider, a traditional high street bank account, and separate accounting software, is what creates the Monday morning administrative headache. Every manual step or data export introduces a risk of data errors.

Connecting your card machine directly to a Teya Business Account closes this loop entirely. Because transactions settle the very next morning, the live feed pushes finalized figures directly to Xero or QuickBooks without delay.

Easy accounting integration for businesses processing card payments

For a business choosing a payment and accounting setup from scratch, the cleanest path is to start with a provider whose card machine, business account, and accounting integration are already built to work together — rather than assembling three separate products and managing the connections between them.

For existing businesses with accounting software in place, the question is whether your current payment provider connects directly to it. If you are using Xero, QuickBooks, or Sage, and your payment provider does not have a live feed integration, you are reconciling manually by default.

Check out our pricing plans to see how Teya's accounting integration fits with card machine access and business banking.