Shopify & Stripe payments: match the Xero reference for automatic bank reconciliation

 For a client I have written an integration which rewrites the payment reference in Dear for Stripe payments, to match the reference that the Stripe bank feed provides Xero. The correct payment reference is captured by Shopify, although it is in a fairly obscure location. Dear is choosing a different reference when it imports Shopify payments from Stripe. This reference doesn't match what Stripe provides Xero, and it means that Xero's auto-matching bank reconciliation doesn't work very well: it can only match by transaction value, which is frequently so common it is not very helpful.

My code also handles refunds. It has been live for three months on a busy site and it works very well. However, my code is hacky, and it can only work if I rewrite the payment reference before Dear syncs to Xero; in practice this is easily achieved, but it is still a technical weakness which I can't avoid since it is Dear which initially imports the payment.

I think Dear should investigate the source of the payment reference it is using, and change to using the correct one. Likely there are other payment providers which should also be investigated for the same reason.

I will provide details if required.