Every week your direct-debit provider pays out a settlement, and someone has to turn it into bookkeeping. They open the report, work out which part is membership income and which part is something else, update the numbers you track, and then enter it all in Xero so the books match what landed in the bank.

If you run more than one studio, and each studio is its own company with its own Xero organisation, you do that twice. It is repetitive, it is easy to get slightly wrong, and it is hard to spot when it is wrong. A charge lands on the wrong line, a settlement is entered twice, or the whole job waits until month end when nobody remembers what the charges were.

This article explains how we automate the weekly Ezypay settlement job for studios that use Ezypay and Xero, and where a person still needs to be in the loop.

How it works

  1. You choose the settlement date. You give the process the Ezypay settlement report for that date, as both the PDF and the CSV.
  2. The AI reads the report. It uses Anthropic's Claude to read the settlement and, where it helps, the matching transactions from Glofox, so income can be split properly rather than lumped together.
  3. It splits the settlement into income lines. The lines go into the studio's Excel KPI workbook, in the layout you already use.
  4. It updates the cashflow forecast. The income rows and the franchise-fee rows in the forecast are brought up to date from the same settlement.
  5. It stops on anything new. If the report contains a charge type it has not seen before, it asks you to map it instead of guessing.
  6. You choose the invoice date. The settlement is then posted to Xero as an invoice with its payment attached.
  7. Franchise-fee payments are recorded. The partner payments are matched against their bills in Xero.

The split of work is deliberate. The AI does the reading and the judgement calls, such as what a line is. Small scripts do the arithmetic and talk to the Xero API. Everything ends up in tools you already use: Excel and Xero. Nothing new for your bookkeeper to learn.

What to watch out for

Posting the same settlement twice. This is the most common and most annoying error in a manual process. Our version refuses to post a studio whose settlement has already been posted. Whatever you build or buy, make sure it has the same kind of check.

Charge types it has not seen before. A new fee or adjustment will turn up eventually. The safe behaviour is to stop and ask, then remember your answer. The unsafe behaviour is to quietly drop it into the nearest income line.

Two dates, two decisions. The settlement date (which report you are processing) and the invoice date (when it lands in Xero) are separate choices. We leave both with the owner, because the right invoice date depends on how you close your periods.

Arithmetic belongs in code. Splits and totals should come from scripts that add things up, not from an AI estimating. The AI reads and classifies; the script checks the totals agree.

Each company is separate. If every studio has its own Xero organisation, each posting has to go to the right one. Treat each studio as its own run.

What still needs a person

  • Choosing the settlement date and the invoice date.
  • Mapping any charge type the process has not seen before.
  • Looking at the result before anything is posted to Xero. We build in a human checkpoint wherever money is posted.
  • Anything outside the normal pattern, such as an odd adjustment that does not fit an existing line.

Real example

We run this for two franchise fitness studios in Auckland that are related companies of ours. Each studio has its own Xero organisation and its own Ezypay settlement. Each week the process splits the settlement into the KPI workbook, updates the cashflow forecast, posts one invoice per studio for the settlement date, with its payment, to Xero, and records the franchise-fee payments against their bills. The owner still picks the dates and approves the posting.

Read the case study

Want this for your business?

We build automations like this at a fixed price, from NZ$1,000 + GST. The same approach works for other gym software, not just Glofox or Ezypay; what matters is what reports and exports your system can give us, and we would check that with you first.

Book a free 30-minute automation audit

FAQ

Can it update the spreadsheet without posting to Xero? Yes. Splitting the settlement into your workbook and cashflow forecast is one step, and posting to Xero is a separate one that you approve.

What stops a settlement being posted twice? The process checks whether that studio has already been posted for that settlement and refuses to post it again.

Does it work with two separate companies? Yes. Each studio is handled as its own run against its own Xero organisation.