Work with your finance data

Once you have connected your assistant, ask it to use xpnAI in your conversation. You do not need to write queries or know the names of the underlying tools.

Start with the right context

Tell the assistant which organisation, date range and currency you are working with. If you have more than one connection, name the Workspace too.

Use xpnAI to confirm the Workspace and organisations available, and tell me when the data was last refreshed.

Transaction analysis uses imported Xero data. If it is out of date, refresh the organisation before asking the assistant to retrieve it again.

Explore transactions and balances

You can work with general ledger lines, accounts payable and receivable documents, dated subledger transactions, aged receivables and payables, bank transactions, fixed assets and fixed asset reconciliation transactions.

Missing details, such as a bank transaction’s contact or an invoice description, remain blank in query results and exports. The transaction is still included. A blank value means the detail is unavailable; it does not mean zero or an empty description.

Try requests such as:

• “Show last month’s general ledger expenses by account for our UK organisation. Include the currency and the transactions behind the five largest balances.”
• “Find supplier bills from this quarter for this contact. Show their dates, amounts and status.”
• “List the fixed assets available for this organisation, with their asset types and current depreciation values.”

The assistant can discover which queries and filters are available. If your request cannot be answered from them, ask it to explain what is missing rather than estimate the result.

For general-ledger totals and trends, you can group by journal and journal-line fields, account fields, organisation fields and any tracking category. For example: “Show monthly net expenses by account type and Department for our Australian organisation from January through August 2026.” You can combine categories such as Department and Region. Ask the assistant to retain unassigned entries and check that combining tracking categories does not count entries twice. The assistant must select the relevant accounts; a summary of every ledger account is not automatically a profit and loss statement.

For accounts payable and receivable, ask for invoice and bill totals, outstanding balances or payments by organisation, contact, document issue date or due date. Dates can be grouped by day, month or year. For example: “Show outstanding supplier bills by contact and due month.” Ask the assistant to keep payables and receivables separate, distinguish contacts with the same name and retain missing due dates. The available document date is its issue date, not a separate creation timestamp.

Ask the assistant to summarize all matching entries before dividing results into pages. State whether counts should count journal lines, distinct journals or documents. Choose original currencies or conversion to the Workspace reporting currency. Original currencies must remain separate and do not require exchange rates. For reporting totals, the assistant must apply the appropriate conversion before adding amounts together.

Individual entries and summary results are retrieved in pages of up to 5,000 rows. Custom queries can return up to 10,000 result rows; a summary can include more source entries than this. If the result exceeds that limit, narrow the output or summarize further. Ask the assistant to retrieve all relevant pages when inspecting entries. One transaction page may be only part of the data and must not be presented as a complete total.

Fixed asset data includes current values. It is not a complete historical asset register for any date you choose.

Xero identifiers in query results, filters, and exports are the original UUIDs, without hashing, encoding, or prefixes. General ledger rows include the journal UUID and line number, plus the Xero journal-line UUID when one exists. Allocation rows can share a source UUID across two document legs; use the organisation, document, and transaction type to distinguish them. Ageing rows use the contact UUID together with the organisation, ledger, currency, and reporting date.

Open journals in Xero

Ask your assistant to include Xero links when listing journals, for example: “Show the ten largest journals this quarter, with a link to each in Xero.”

General ledger and fixed asset reconciliation results include links to the journal’s source transaction, or to its journal details when no source transaction is available. Each link opens the matching Xero Organisation. You need access to that Organisation in Xero and may need to sign in.

If a link is unavailable, ask a Workspace administrator to check the Organisation’s connection and sync status in Connections > Xero, then retry the query after a successful sync.

Review aged receivables and payables

Ask your assistant, for example: “Show aged receivables by contact as at 31 August, with unapplied credits shown separately.” Specify the reporting date and whether you want receivables, payables, or both. You can also limit the report to particular organisations or contacts.

Ageing uses the balance remaining at that date. A payment after the reporting date does not reduce an earlier balance. Aged amounts default to days past the due date, with current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and over-90-day buckets. Ask to age from the invoice date if that is your preferred basis. Credits remain separate instead of being applied to unrelated invoices automatically.

The report keeps each organisation, AR/AP ledger and document currency separate. It does not convert balances into the Workspace reporting currency. Do not add totals in different currencies together.

Credit notes and overpayments are included. Unapplied prepayments are excluded from ordinary aged AR/AP; ask to include prepayments when reviewing the full contact balance. Allocations of prepayments to invoices or bills still reduce those documents when prepayments are excluded.

For the supporting activity, ask for the contact’s dated subledger transactions. This includes invoices, bills, payments, credit notes, prepayments, overpayments, refunds and allocations. Allocations appear on both affected documents and do not count as another cash payment.

CIS deductions on bills and supplier credit notes appear as separate non-cash transactions on the document date. They reduce the bill amount payable or the credit available without changing the gross document total or cash paid.

Give the assistant an as-at date for ageing. Do not restrict it to transactions starting on a later date, as that would exclude earlier balances. Prepayments are included by default in transaction detail, even though ordinary aged AR/AP excludes unapplied prepayments.

Complete the Xero refresh before using a new organisation’s subledger. Each result identifies the last completed subledger sync. Later corrections or deletions in Xero can change an earlier as-at report after the next successful refresh. These reports reflect the corrected accounting records, rather than a copy of what someone saw on that earlier day.

Export transactions

Ask for the organisation, period and format you need:

Export the general ledger transactions for our Australian organisation for August 2026 as compressed CSV.

Exports support compressed CSV and Parquet, with up to 100,000 rows per export. If the result is larger, narrow the dates or other filters and create separate exports.

The assistant can also read an export through the same xpnAI connection in CSV parts. This lets it analyse the full extract when its environment cannot open the download link. If the assistant cannot read those parts, download the file yourself and open it with a compatible tool. Expired results require a new export.

Open the download link returned by the assistant to save the file. Extract a compressed CSV file before opening it in a spreadsheet. Parquet requires a tool that can read that format.

The download link expires. Anyone with the full link can use it until then, so share the downloaded file through your usual approved process. If a link has expired, ask for a new export. Retrieving the old link does not extend it.

Create a draft journal in Xero

For sales invoices, supplier bills and paired intercompany charges, use the bills, invoices and recharges guide. That workflow has its own optional permission and saves documents as drafts in Xero.

Your assistant connection must have draft-journal permission. Check that the xpnAI approval page includes creating draft manual journals. A connection authorised only to read finance data cannot create them. Xero must also have granted journal access, and your subscription must allow changes.

Specify the destination organisation, date, narration and balanced debit and credit lines. For example:

Prepare a draft journal dated 31 August 2026 in our Australian organisation for this accrual. Show me the proposed accounts and amounts for approval before creating it in Xero.

Use active accounts and amounts in the destination organisation’s base currency. Amounts must be nonzero and have no more than two decimal places. These journals use NoTax. Bank accounts and Xero’s accounts receivable, accounts payable and retained earnings system accounts cannot be used. Each line can include up to two existing tracking categories with valid options.

After creation, open the Xero link from the assistant, review the draft and post it in Xero yourself. The assistant cannot post, approve or update a journal through this connection.

Missing reporting exchange rates do not prevent journal creation. Ask for amounts in the organisation’s local currency when a conversion rate is unavailable. Local-currency queries still work; queries that request converted amounts need the relevant rates.

For conversion at a specific date, including closing balances and bank revaluation movements, xpnAI prefers that date’s daily rate. If it is unavailable, it uses the month’s month-end rate, then its monthly average. Workspace overrides take precedence. Reports using period-average conversion continue to prefer monthly averages.

See Exchange rates for why bank revaluations and unrealised FX gains and losses can differ from Xero, and why realised gains and losses are unaffected by daily rate timing.

If the assistant reports that creation is still in progress or its outcome is unknown, check Xero before asking it to create another journal. This avoids creating a duplicate. If xpnAI confirms no journal was created, correct the problem before trying again.

Plan deferrals and accruals

Ask your assistant to use xpnAI’s Deferrals or Accruals guidance. Deferrals covers deferred revenue and prepaid expenses. Accruals covers expense and income accruals, recurrence, and full or partial reversals.

For example: “Spread the expense on this annual insurance bill over its coverage dates. Show the initial prepayment and all monthly releases before saving drafts.” Or: “Accrue $3,000 of utilities at each of the next three month-ends and reverse each amount on the following day. Use Department: Operations on both lines.”

To prepare, approve and save a schedule, connect with draft-journal access. The assistant creates Xero drafts; you review and post them yourself in Xero. Plans use one connected, selected Xero organisation at a time, and the Workspace must allow writes.

Deferrals

Refresh the organisation’s Xero data first. Your assistant finds the invoice, bill or journal and retrieves its booked account and tracking amounts. The amount comes from the organisation’s base-currency general ledger, excluding separately booked tax. Selecting both an invoice and its linked GL posting does not provide another amount to defer.

Choose the amount, balance-sheet account, release account, initial date, inclusive service dates and spreading method. Equal-month spreading assigns an equal share to every month touched by the service range. Actual-day spreading weights each month by its covered days, including leap days. Releases are dated at calendar month-end, with cents allocated so the total matches exactly. Custom release dates, milestone methods and catch-up calculations are not yet supported by the deferral calculator.

Revenue deferrals transfer revenue into a liability and release it back to revenue. Expense prepayments transfer expense into an asset and release it back to expense. If the source is already booked to the selected deferral account, the plan includes releases only. Source tracking is preserved. Here, prepayment means a prepaid expense schedule; it does not allocate an unapplied Xero prepayment to a bill.

Accruals

Supply the evidence or estimate, debit and credit accounts, amount, accounting date and tracking. Specify a finite occurrence count and the number of months between occurrences. Choose month-end anchoring when needed. For each occurrence, reversals can specify one or more amounts and days after its accounting date. The preview shows the resulting exact dates; partial reversals cannot exceed the accrual. Use separate items for custom dates, changing amounts or tracking splits.

Each accrual item uses the same tracking on its debit and credit, and preserves it on reversal. Confirm that bills or journals have not already recognised the cost. A desired closing accrual balance must first be converted into an explicit adjustment; the tool does not infer an obligation’s balance from its account balance.

Review and save drafts

Your assistant may ask for confirmation before replacing an existing proposal or cancelling an unsent plan. Check the selected plan before confirming. These actions change the saved proposal even when they do not change records in Xero.

The saved preview shows every dated journal, account, tracking selection, amount and the cash-basis reporting choice. Plans use NoTax journals in the organisation’s base currency. Review the complete schedule and explicitly approve that revision before your assistant saves it as Xero drafts.

After approval, the assistant saves the entire schedule as DRAFT journals now with its approved accounting dates, including future entries and reversals. Drafts do not affect ledger or reporting balances until you post them in Xero. Large schedules take several calls. This does not start a recurring background task. Each successful entry returns a Xero journal ID and link after read-back verification. Accounts, tracking and period locks are checked live; source amounts are rechecked against the latest imported GL data.

Keep the plan ID when continuing in another conversation. A plan can contain up to 500 journals. Changing a wholly unsent plan creates a new revision requiring fresh approval. Source amounts are reserved across saved plans to prevent over-allocation; cancel an unused, wholly unsent plan to release its reservation. Review journals created outside these plans separately, as they are not automatically matched.

If draft creation stops, earlier journals remain in Xero. Ask your assistant to inspect the plan’s receipts. An uncertain or unverified outcome must be reconciled against the matching Xero journal before continuing; do not create a replacement plan to force a retry. Sent plans cannot be rewritten or cancelled. If they need correction, inspect their current status in Xero. Review and amend drafts there; entries already posted need an approved adjustment.

Keep audit attachments

Select Journal & invoice plans in the left navigation to see your Workspace’s plans in separate Journal plans and Bills & invoices sections. Open a journal plan to inspect its journals and audit files. Expand a bill or invoice plan to inspect both entities, contacts, line accounts, totals and each document’s creation status. Created as DRAFT means the document was created in Xero; a draft plan is still a proposal. The assistant can also give you a direct link to a journal plan or a standalone journal’s attachment page. Links require sign-in and access to the owning Workspace.

Choose Upload a file to retain a file of your choice, or Create a rationale text file to record your explanation. Supply a reference or link to the original journal or document. Generated text files include your signed-in name, email and user reference, the source reference and a link to the xpnAI plan or journal record. Uploaded files remain unchanged. Each plan revision or standalone journal supports up to ten files, each up to 10 MB.

Select Save attachment, then Attach saved files in Xero once the journals have been saved. Your assistant can carry out the same steps. The page shows how many journal attachments Xero has confirmed. If Xero needs additional attachment permission, reconnect Xero and retry attaching the saved files. A failed attachment does not mean journal creation failed; never recreate a journal to retry its attachment.

For prepayments and deferred revenue, attachments go on initial deferral journals only, never on monthly releases. If the source was already booked to the deferral account and the plan has no initial journal, the evidence stays on the xpnAI plan. Accrual evidence goes on accrual journals, not reversals. Evidence belongs to its plan revision; after revising a plan, add the evidence for the new revision explicitly. Earlier evidence remains available for review.

Send feedback or request a feature

If your assistant cannot do what you need, or its result is wrong, ask it to record feedback for the xpnAI team. It will propose a short summary and ask whether to submit it. You can describe the result you expected, what happened and a feature you would find useful. Avoid including credentials or unnecessary finance data. The saved feedback includes your identity and Workspace. The assistant provides a reference after xpnAI records it.

Manage accounts and tracking

Your assistant connection must have chart-management permission. The approval page must include changes to accounts and tracking. Xero must also have granted accounting settings access, and your subscription must allow changes.

You can ask the assistant to:

• Read the current chart of accounts, tracking categories, options and tax rates from Xero.
• Create accounts or change account names, codes, account types and tax types.
• Create or rename tracking categories and options.
• Archive accounts, tracking categories and options.

Name the destination organisation and ask to review the proposal before changes are made. These changes take effect immediately in Xero. The connection cannot delete records, merge accounts, create tax rates or change transaction postings. Xero’s restrictions still apply.

Creating a bank account requires a bank account number. Converting an existing account between bank and non-bank types is not supported.

Align charts across organisations

Compare the accounts and tracking in our Australian and New Zealand organisations against this agreed chart. Show the proposed matches and changes for each organisation, and wait for my approval before changing Xero.

Check that matched accounts have the same purpose. Similar names or codes do not prove they should be treated as the same account. Tax settings must be valid for each destination organisation.

Xero allows two active tracking categories and four active or archived categories in total. Archiving one does not free a total-category slot.

Your assistant can submit up to 100 account and tracking changes together across organisations. Different organisations are processed concurrently, while changes within each organisation are applied in the submitted order. The result includes each change’s outcome and a freshly read chart for each organisation.

If a change fails or its outcome is uncertain, remaining changes for that organisation are not attempted. Other organisations continue, and earlier successful changes remain. Ask the assistant to distinguish confirmed changes, failures, uncertain outcomes and changes not attempted. If the final chart could not be retrieved, read it again before continuing. A disconnected or cancelled request can leave partial changes; inspect Xero before retrying.

Create a tracking category first, then use its returned ID when adding options in a subsequent request.

The assistant may offer Align charts and tracking across organisations as a reusable prompt. If it does not, the example request above provides a starting point.

Transaction analysis reflects updated Xero settings after the next successful import. Refresh the organisation when you need those changes in the imported data.

If a change is not permitted

Check the assistant connection’s permissions first. An older read-only connection does not gain journal or chart permissions automatically. Reconnect using a client that requests the needed permission and review it on the approval page. Reauthorise Xero if the missing access is on the Xero connection.

If the subscription is blocked, ask a Subscription Administrator to resolve billing.