How to Connect Xero to HubSpot and Automate Invoicing for a UK Services Firm — Step by Step with Make.com

If your team closes a deal in HubSpot and then manually creates the invoice in Xero, you are burning time and introducing errors. The native HubSpot-Xero sync handles contact and invoice visibility — it does not create invoices automatically. For that, you need middleware. Make.com (formerly Integromat) lets you build a scenario where a closed-won deal in HubSpot triggers a draft invoice in Xero, complete with line items, payment terms, and the correct VAT rate. The whole setup takes an afternoon, costs from £7.50 a month on Make.com's Core plan, and — done properly — maintains the digital links that Making Tax Digital requires. This guide walks through every step, flags the pricing traps, and compares Make.com against Zapier so you can pick the right tool for the job.

Why the Native Sync Is Not Enough

HubSpot's built-in Xero connector — available through HubSpot's data sync — does three things well. It syncs contacts between the two platforms, it lets you see Xero invoices inside HubSpot deal records, and it maps products to Xero items. For a firm that just wants its sales team to check payment status without opening Xero, that is genuinely useful. What it does not do is create invoices. When a deal moves to closed-won in HubSpot, nothing happens in Xero unless a person logs in and raises the invoice manually. For a five-person consultancy handling ten deals a month, that is a mild annoyance. For a 30-person agency closing 40 to 60 deals a month, it is a bottleneck that delays cash collection and introduces data entry errors. The native sync also has a UK-specific advantage worth noting: invoice syncing is supported in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand but not in other regions. So UK firms can at least see invoices across both platforms. They just cannot generate them automatically without middleware.

What Make.com Actually Does

Make.com is a visual automation platform that connects apps through scenarios — flowcharts where each node is an action in a different tool. You set a trigger (a deal reaches closed-won in HubSpot), add processing steps (map deal properties to invoice fields, calculate VAT, set payment terms), and end with an action (create a draft invoice in Xero). The platform switched from operations-based billing to a credit system in August 2025. One credit roughly equals one action in a scenario. For a Xero-HubSpot invoicing workflow, a typical run uses 3 to 5 credits: one to detect the deal change, one to fetch deal details, one to look up the contact in Xero, one to create the invoice, and optionally one to send a Slack notification. At 40 invoices a month, that is 120 to 200 credits — well within the Core plan's 10,000 monthly credit allowance.

The Step-by-Step Build

Start by creating a free Make.com account and connecting both your HubSpot and Xero accounts via OAuth. Make.com handles the authentication flow — you will be redirected to each platform to grant access. Create a new scenario. Your first module is a HubSpot trigger: Watch Deals. Set the filter to fire when the deal stage changes to Closed Won. Your second module is a HubSpot action: Get a Deal. This pulls the full deal record including associated contact, line items, and custom properties like payment terms or project code. Your third module is a Xero action: Search Contacts. Use the contact email from HubSpot to find the matching Xero contact. If no match exists, add a Xero Create Contact module as a fallback route. Your fourth module is the critical one: Xero Create Invoice. Map the deal's line items to invoice line items. Set the invoice type to ACCREC (accounts receivable). Map your payment terms — Net 30, Net 14, or whatever your firm uses — from a HubSpot custom property or set a default. Set the currency to GBP. Apply the correct VAT rate using Xero's tax type codes — OUTPUT2 for standard 20% VAT on services. Set the invoice status to DRAFT so your finance team can review before sending, or AUTHORISED if you want fully hands-off processing. Save and activate the scenario. Set it to run every 15 minutes on the free plan, or at five-minute intervals on paid plans.

Pricing in GBP — All Three Platforms

Xero's UK plans run at three tiers: Starter at £15 a month (reduced from the older £29 standard rate for new customers in promotional periods), Standard at £33 a month, and Premium at £47 a month. All prices exclude VAT. The Starter plan supports quotes and 20 invoices per month, which is fine for a small consultancy. Standard removes the invoice cap. Premium adds multi-currency and expenses. HubSpot's free CRM tier handles deals, contacts, and the native Xero connector at no cost. If you need sales sequences, custom reporting, or workflow automation inside HubSpot itself, the Starter plan is £18 per seat per month. Professional jumps to £85 per seat per month and adds invoicing tools within HubSpot — though at that price you are better off keeping invoicing in Xero where your accountant already works. Make.com's pricing is in USD globally with no GBP billing option. Core costs $10.59 a month (roughly £8.50 at current rates) for 10,000 credits. Pro costs $18.82 (roughly £15) for 10,000 credits with priority execution and two-minute minimum intervals. Teams costs $29 per user per month. For a typical UK services firm running one Xero-HubSpot invoicing scenario, the Core plan is more than sufficient.

Making Tax Digital and Digital Links

Making Tax Digital for VAT already requires businesses above the VAT threshold to keep digital records and submit returns through compatible software. Xero is HMRC-recognised for MTD. The critical compliance point for automated invoicing is digital links — the requirement that data flows between software without manual rekeying. Copy and paste does not count as a digital link. An API connection between Make.com and Xero does count, because the data transfers automatically through a programmatic interface. This matters because if HMRC audits your MTD compliance, they will look at how invoice data enters Xero. If it arrives via an authenticated API call from Make.com, that is a valid digital link. If someone copies deal values from HubSpot into a spreadsheet and then types them into Xero, that chain is broken. MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment begins in April 2026 for sole traders and landlords earning above £50,000. While this primarily affects unincorporated businesses, limited companies running services through a mix of personal and corporate vehicles should check their exposure. The automation you build now for VAT-registered invoicing will serve you when the scope expands.

Make.com vs Zapier for This Specific Job

Zapier can build the same Xero-HubSpot invoicing workflow. The question is whether it is the better tool for this particular job. Zapier's pricing starts at $29.99 a month (roughly £24) for 750 tasks on the Professional plan — which is the lowest tier that supports multi-step Zaps. Make.com's Core plan at $10.59 gives you 10,000 credits. For a 4-step invoicing workflow running 40 times a month, Zapier uses 160 tasks (4 steps times 40 runs) against its 750 allowance. Make.com uses roughly 160 credits against its 10,000 allowance. Both handle the volume, but Make.com costs a third of the price and leaves far more headroom for additional automations. Where Zapier wins is simplicity. Its interface is more intuitive for someone who has never built an automation before. Make.com's visual scenario builder is more powerful but has a steeper learning curve — routing, error handling, and iterators take time to understand. For a one-off invoicing scenario, either works. If you plan to build five or ten automations across your business, Make.com's pricing and flexibility pull ahead.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The first mistake is mapping line items incorrectly. HubSpot deals can have multiple line items, and Make.com needs an iterator module to loop through them and create each one as a separate invoice line in Xero. Without the iterator, you get one invoice line with the last item's details. The second mistake is forgetting VAT. If you do not explicitly set the tax type on each invoice line, Xero may default to No VAT, which means your invoice totals will be wrong and your VAT return will be short. Always map the tax type to OUTPUT2 for standard-rated UK services. The third mistake is setting the invoice status to AUTHORISED when you should use DRAFT. Once an invoice is authorised in Xero, it is included in your VAT return. If the automation creates a malformed invoice and you do not catch it before the quarterly submission, you have a compliance problem. Start with DRAFT and move to AUTHORISED only after you have tested the scenario with 20 or 30 real deals. The fourth mistake is not handling contact mismatches. If a HubSpot contact's email does not match any Xero contact, your scenario will fail silently unless you add error handling. Always include a router with a fallback path that creates the contact in Xero or sends an alert to your finance team.

What a Finished Automation Looks Like

When this is working properly, the flow runs like this. A salesperson moves a deal to closed-won in HubSpot. Within 15 minutes, Make.com detects the change, pulls the deal data, finds or creates the Xero contact, and generates a draft invoice with the correct line items, VAT rate, payment terms, and currency. Your finance team gets a Slack notification (or email, or Teams message — Make.com connects to all of them) saying a new draft invoice is waiting for review. They open Xero, check the invoice looks right, approve it, and send it. The time from deal close to invoice sent drops from 24 to 48 hours to under an hour. Cash collection starts sooner. Data entry errors disappear. And every step maintains a valid digital link for MTD purposes.