Xero Integration & Billing Automation Specialist

We are a small UK intellectual property practice using Equinox IPMS (software for recording legal IP case related activity and charges) and Xero. We are looking for an experienced integration and automation specialist to undertake an initial discovery and design project for a billing automation workflow. Current process: * Chargeable work, official fees, renewal fees, foreign associate costs and other disbursements are recorded in Equinox throughout the month. * Charges are reviewed and approved at month end. * Invoices are currently generated and sent using a largely manual process. Our objective is to automate this workflow and use Xero as the invoice-generation platform. We have already confirmed that: * Equinox provides an API, including a charge endpoint. * Each charge has a unique charge ID. * Custom fields can be added to charge records within Equinox. * Charge category and subcategory data are available and can be used to determine VAT treatment. * Xero will remain our accounting platform. The proposed workflow is: 1. Retrieve approved charges from Equinox. 2. Apply billing and VAT rules. 3. Create draft invoices in Xero. 4. Record the resulting Xero invoice number against the originating charge (either in Equinox or via an external audit mechanism). 5. Prevent duplicate invoicing of charges. 6. Maintain a clear audit trail. For this initial engagement, we are looking for: * Review of the Equinox and Xero APIs. * Assessment of technical feasibility and risks. * Recommended solution architecture. * Suggested implementation approach. * Estimated implementation effort and cost. Experience with Xero API integrations, workflow automation, Python, REST APIs and similar business process automation projects is preferred. Please provide details of similar integrations or automation projects you have completed.