Services
Monthly bookkeeping run entirely in Xero — closed, reviewed and proven every period by the team that does the work.
Bookkeeping packages
Group one
Automation That Stops Data Entry
Coding transactions is the largest single consumer of bookkeeping time and the easiest to remove.
Contact defaults
Every contact in Xero can carry a default account code, tax rate and tracking category. Set them once and every future bill or invoice for that supplier arrives pre-coded. For a business with forty recurring suppliers, this removes most coding decisions permanently, and it removes the inconsistency where the same supplier lands in three different accounts depending on who entered it.
Bank rules
A rule matches incoming bank lines on payee, reference or amount and applies the contact, account, tax rate and tracking you specify. The monthly software subscription, the fuel card, the bank charge: each becomes a one-click reconcile or no click at all. Rules take minutes to build and they apply forever.
Document capture
Hubdoc is included on every Xero plan. Suppliers email invoices to a dedicated address, or staff photograph receipts, and the document arrives extracted and attached to the transaction. The attachment matters as much as the extraction: a bill with its source document attached is a bill nobody has to go hunting for at year end.
Item defaults
Inventory and service items carry their own account codes and prices. Selecting an item on an invoice fills the rest. For any business selling a repeatable set of things, this ends the practice of retyping descriptions and prices from the last invoice.
Quote conversion
An accepted quote converts to an invoice without retyping. The work that was priced is the work that gets billed, which also closes the gap where a quote is discounted in conversation and the invoice quietly reflects the original figure.
Group two
Automation That Stops Chasing
Receivables is where unused automation costs actual cash rather than time.
Invoice reminders
Xero sends a ladder of reminders on a schedule you define, from your own address, using your wording. Most files have the feature switched off. A configured ladder collects earlier than a person who chases when they remember, because it never forgets and never feels awkward about asking.
Two settings decide whether it works. The ladder needs more than one rung, because a single nudge at seven days is a gesture rather than a process. And the default wording apologises for asking to be paid, which is not the tone most businesses want on a sixty-day invoice.
Repeating invoices
Any recurring charge can be scheduled to raise and send itself: retainers, subscriptions, rent, maintenance. The invoice goes out on the day it should rather than the day someone remembers, which moves cash in by the number of days that gap usually runs.
Payment services
Connecting a payment service puts a pay-now button on the invoice. Removing the step where a customer has to open their banking app is the single largest lever on how quickly invoices convert to cash, and it costs a processing fee rather than a subscription.
Group three
Automation That Shortens the Close
Four features turn recurring month-end journals into something that has already happened by the time you look.
Repeating journals
Depreciation, prepayment releases, accruals and management charges all repeat on a schedule. A repeating journal posts them automatically, and a dynamic label in the title carries through to every description line so the narration updates with the period instead of being retyped. Skipping this is why so many small business balance sheets carry assets at original cost until somebody posts twelve months of depreciation in one entry at year end.
The fixed asset register
Register an asset with its cost, date and depreciation method, and Xero runs depreciation and posts the journal. The register agrees with the balance sheet by construction rather than by reconciliation.
Tracked inventory
A tracked item posts cost of goods sold automatically when an invoice containing it is approved, moving average cost from the inventory asset account to COGS. Gross margin appears in management accounts without a month-end stock adjustment.
Repeating bills
Predictable supplier costs, rent, insurance, subscriptions, can be scheduled as repeating bills. The payables side of the cash position becomes complete without anyone entering the same bill every month.
Group four
The Tools Your Bookkeeper Has
Two features sit behind advisor access, which is why business owners rarely encounter them.
- Cash coding. A spreadsheet-style view for reconciling in bulk. Hundreds of similar lines coded and reconciled in a single pass rather than one at a time. On a file that is behind, this is the difference between a day and a week.
- Find and recode. Bulk-changes the account, tax rate or tracking on transactions that were coded wrongly, across a whole period, with a preview before it commits. Fixing a misposted account across six months takes minutes.
If your bookkeeper is reconciling line by line on a file with hundreds of similar transactions, ask whether cash coding is being used. It is the clearest indicator of whether someone knows the tool they are working in.
Group five
What Arrived in 2026
- Auto-reconcile bank transactions, on the Growing plan and above, which matches and reconciles without the click.
- Xero Payroll, powered by Gusto, launched August 2026, running federal, state and local tax calculations and filings inside Xero rather than beside it.
- Xero Bill Payments, paying bills from within the ledger so the payment and the bill it settles are recorded together.
- Melio Expense Management, categorising card spending in real time rather than reconstructing it from a monthly statement.
- JAX and XeroForce, including a pre-built month-end agent that works from document and reconciliation status through to prepayment and amortisation journals, and returns its working for review.
The review step on that last one is the part to check on any tool offering this level of automation. An agent that posts journals and shows how it reached them is useful. The same agent posting silently is a control problem.
The reason
Why They Stay Switched Off
Four causes, and none of them is that the features are hard.
- Setup happened once, under time pressure. Whoever migrated the file got it working and moved on. Nobody scheduled a return visit.
- Each one saves minutes, so none feels urgent. The saving is in aggregate across a year, which is invisible in any single week.
- The person doing the work is not the person who would configure it. An owner entering bills at 11pm is not going to stop and build bank rules.
- Nobody audits the setup. A file is set up and then used. Reviewing whether the configuration still matches the business is nobody’s job unless it is somebody’s job.
The cost compounds quietly. A business entering forty bills a month by hand spends roughly a working week a year on something contact defaults and document capture would have removed on day one.
In order
What to Switch On First
Ranked by hours saved per minute spent configuring.
| # | Feature | What it removes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contact defaults on your top 20 suppliers | Most coding decisions, permanently |
| 2 | Bank rules for every recurring payment | The repetitive half of reconciliation |
| 3 | Invoice reminders, as a ladder | Chasing, and the discomfort of chasing |
| 4 | Document capture, with a supplier email address | Bill entry, and the year-end hunt for documents |
| 5 | Repeating invoices and bills | Monthly retyping, and invoices going out late |
| 6 | Repeating journals for depreciation and prepayments | Half the month-end journal work |
| 7 | A payment service on invoices | Days between invoice and cash |
The first four take an afternoon between them and remove more work than everything below. Start there.
One caveat on all of it: automation applies whatever rule you gave it, correctly, every time. A bank rule coding to the wrong account does so consistently and silently. Review what the rules produced for the first month after building them.
Questions
Commonly Asked
What can Xero automate without an add-on?
Coding through contact and item defaults, reconciliation through bank rules, bill entry through Hubdoc document capture which is included on every plan, invoicing through repeating invoices and quote conversion, collections through invoice reminders, and month-end through repeating journals, the fixed asset register and tracked inventory posting cost of goods sold automatically. The Growing plan and above adds auto-reconcile.
What are Xero bank rules and are they safe?
A bank rule matches incoming bank lines on payee, reference or amount and applies a contact, account code, tax rate and tracking category. They remove the repetitive half of reconciliation. They apply exactly what you told them, every time, so a rule pointing at the wrong account will code consistently and silently to the wrong place. Review what your rules produced for the first month after building them.
Why is nobody using these features?
Setup usually happened once under time pressure and nobody scheduled a return visit. Each feature saves minutes rather than hours, so none feels urgent in any given week. And the person entering bills at 11pm is not the person who would stop to configure automation. The cost only becomes visible in aggregate: forty bills a month entered by hand is roughly a working week a year.
What is cash coding in Xero?
A spreadsheet-style view, available with advisor access, for coding and reconciling transactions in bulk rather than one at a time. On a file with hundreds of similar lines, or a file that is behind, it turns a week of work into a day. If your bookkeeper is reconciling line by line on high-volume transactions, ask whether they are using it.
Can Xero post depreciation automatically?
Yes, two ways. The fixed asset register runs depreciation on registered assets and posts the journal, keeping the register and the balance sheet in agreement by construction. A repeating journal handles the same job for anything outside the register, along with prepayment releases and recurring accruals, with a dynamic label so the narration updates with each period.
Which automation should I turn on first?
Contact defaults on your top twenty suppliers, bank rules for every recurring payment, invoice reminders as a ladder rather than a single nudge, and document capture with a dedicated supplier email address. Those four take an afternoon and remove more work than anything else on the list.