Question

Google Calendar trigger on only past items to create invoice in Xero

  • 18 October 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 20 views

I’m looking to create Xero invoices from Google Calendar events.

The existing workflow is to create an event and add a list of charges in the description - I believe I can do this action. Due to the nature of.. well.. ‘life’  events may be created, moved, cancelled and edited multiple times including but not necessarily the day of the event (ie “today”).

I can’t use New Event or Updated Event for the trigger..as I don’t really want to create future invoices ( I noticed that in testing Zapier picked up a weekly re occurring calendar event as the test items.. with the three captured events in 2026?. So it looks like Google Calendar reoccurring events are inserted 5 years in advance(?) I don’t want five years of weekly invoices created .. nor ‘pay’ the processing cost each time one is modified as X years worth of weekly invoices are updated!

If I use Event Ended then I can see issues,  with say an early morning event that was cancelled or changed last minute but was not modified in that calendar in time. For example a 6 AM appointment would only be corrected by an Admin later in the day.

I can’t see an option for Ended or modified (which would allow for changes made to be carried across).


Ideally I want the trigger to be time based (local timezone) such as ‘1:00AM’ then run through any past events (that haven’t been imported already) creating the invoices.

Am I missing something here?
 


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1 reply

Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @Webdew 

Consider using an operational database such as Airtable to log your events: https://zapier.com/apps/airtable/integrations

Airtable has Views: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202624989-Guide-to-views

Views have filters.

When there is a new record in a View it can be used to trigger a Zap.

Airtable also has an API: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/203313985-Public-REST-API