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Custom Business Structures from XPM

Xero Practice Manager (XPM) lets each practice define its own business structures for clients — beyond the standard ones. When you pull or sync those clients into StructureGram (SG), SG needs to know which of its entity types (Individual, Company, Trust, SMSF, or Partnership) each XPM structure corresponds to.

This article explains how SG handles a custom structure the first time it sees one, the mapping rule that remembers your choice for next time, and how to manage or delete those rules.

For how the pull works overall, see How to Pull Data from XPM; for comparing the two systems, see XPM Reconciliation.

Structures StructureGram Recognises Automatically

You only need to do anything for custom structures. SG already recognises the standard XPM business structures and maps them without asking, including:

  • Individual
  • Company
  • Trust (and common variants such as Unit Trust, Testamentary Trust, and Estate)
  • Partnership
  • SMSF
  • Not For Profit

Anything your practice has defined in XPM that isn't one of these is treated as a custom business structure.

Choosing an SG Entity Type for a Custom Structure

The first time you import or sync a client whose XPM business structure SG doesn't recognise, SG can't safely guess what it is — for example, a practice might use a custom structure called "Individual Trustee" for a person who acts as a trustee. So instead of guessing, SG asks you to choose the matching SG entity type during the import review, before the client is created.

Pick the SG entity type that best matches how that structure should appear in your diagrams:

  • If the structure represents a person → Individual
  • If it represents a company → Company
  • If it represents a trust → Trust (you may also be asked to choose the trust type, e.g. discretionary or unit)
  • and so on for SMSF or Partnership.

Once you make the choice, the client imports as that SG entity type.

Tip: If a custom structure represents a person but XPM carries no first/last name, SG imports it as an Individual with placeholder names ([FirstName] / [LastName]) so you can fill them in later — it won't cram an organisation name into the name fields.

The Mapping Rule (Remembered for Next Time)

Your choice isn't a one-off. SG saves it as a mapping rule — "this XPM business structure → this SG entity type" — for your organisation. From then on:

  • Every later import of a client with that same business structure is classified automatically, with no prompt.
  • Sync and reconciliation use the rule too. This is important: with the rule in place, a mapped structure is compared using your chosen SG type, so reconciliation won't flag a false "Business Structure differs" just because XPM's raw label doesn't match SG's vocabulary.

Mapping rules are shared across your organisation, so once one person classifies a structure, everyone benefits from it.

Managing and Deleting Mapping Rules

You can review and remove your organisation's mapping rules at any time:

  1. Go to Account Settings.
  2. Open the Integrations tab.
  3. Select Xero-XPM Integration.
  4. Scroll to Custom Business Structure mapping rules.

Each rule is shown as "XPM business structure → SG entity type" (for example, Individual Trustee → Individual). To remove one, click the trash icon next to it and confirm.

What deleting a rule does:

  • The next import of an XPM client with that business structure will ask you to choose the SG entity type again.
  • It does not change entities you've already imported — those keep whatever entity type they were created as. Deleting a rule only affects how future imports of that structure are classified.

If you classified a structure incorrectly, delete the rule and re-import (or re-run the pull) so you're prompted to choose the correct SG entity type, which then saves a corrected rule.

Who Can Manage Mapping Rules

Creating a rule happens naturally for anyone who can run a pull and review imports. Managing (deleting) existing rules follows your XPM integration permissions — see XPM Permissions by Member Role. If you don't see the delete option, you may not have the required role.

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