This article explains how you can capture orders in the Onsight mobile app when you are offline, and how those orders later sync through into Xero once you are back online.
Onsight is built for outside sales teams who need to take orders in the field, even when mobile coverage is patchy or completely unavailable.
The typical flow is:
This means your reps can keep taking orders without waiting for a signal, and your office team can fulfil the order and invoice from Xero as soon as the device reconnects and uploads the order.
When you are offline, the Onsight mobile app cannot communicate with the Onsight server, and it cannot communicate with Xero.
Instead, Onsight uses offline technology so the app can continue to function:
In other words, offline mode means the app runs from a local copy of your key data, so you can keep working even without internet access.
When you log in for the first time, the app needs to download your data set (products, customers, pricing, and stock). Depending on how much data your account contains, that initial sync can take a few minutes. After that, Onsight typically performs incremental syncing, which means it only pulls down recent changes and is usually completed in seconds.
Data only synchronises when you are online. If you want to be sure everything is current before heading into poor coverage, you can manually trigger a sync. If you know you are going somewhere with limited reception, we recommend syncing before you go offline. This also helps ensure any orders you capture during the day will be ready to send into Xero as soon as you reconnect.
To manually trigger a sync:
Alternatively, you can log out and log back in again to achieve the same result.
Product and customer updates will sync automatically to your device. This includes:
You can create a sales order in the Onsight app while you are offline. The steps are the same as when you are online.
If you are offline, the order is stored on your device and will sync automatically the next time you have an internet connection. After syncing, you will receive an email containing the order PDF.
When your device reconnects, syncing happens in two stages.
As soon as the app detects you are online, it uploads any offline activity, including:
At this point, the order is safely stored on the Onsight server.
Once the order is on the Onsight server, the Onsight Xero connector sends it into Xero. Typically, Onsight orders are sent to Xero as invoices in the ‘Draft’ state, and Onsight quotes are sent to Xero as quotes. After reviewing the draft invoice in Xero, your office team can submit and approve it, then send it to the customer as normal.
This two-stage design matters because it means the mobile device does not need a direct connection to Xero while your reps are on the road. It only needs to reconnect long enough to sync with the Onsight server, and then the Onsight-to-Xero sync completes automatically.