How to Automate Xero

Xero turned the accounts into something the owner opens themselves

Xero is cloud accounting software, and its real achievement was making the books into something a business owner will actually open. The accounts used to live on a machine in the bookkeeper's office while everyone else waited for a report. Now the owner, the bookkeeper and the accountant are in the same file, on the same reconcile screen, on the same Tuesday.

What sits in it is the whole shape of the business. Every invoice sent and every bill owed. The bank feed, pulling transactions in overnight. The contacts, the chart of accounts, the sales tax return waiting to be filed. The dashboard the owner glances at to see whether there is enough to cover payroll on Friday.

It runs businesses that have nothing else in common: a cafe, a distributor, a modelling agency, an HVAC wholesaler. What they share is that Xero has to be right, because it is the copy of the business that eventually gets filed.

Coding transactions is the last step, not the long one

Ask anyone who keeps a set of books where the hours really go, and it is not the reconcile screen. Clicking OK on a suggested match takes a second.

The hours go into everything that happens before that. Logging into the card processor to work out which lump-sum payout covers which day's sales. Downloading the month's supplier invoices one account portal at a time, because none of them email a PDF. Reading a till system's report on screen and typing the totals in by hand, because the export it offers is not the export you need. Chasing the same four subcontractors for the same four receipts.

Each of those is a person with fifteen browser tabs open, doing work that is entirely mechanical and entirely necessary. It is also the work that quietly decides whether the books are two days behind or two months.

Xero

The payout, broken down The lump sum from the card processor split back into the days and the sales it covers, before anyone asks where the difference came from.

Bills and receipts collected Supplier invoices pulled from each account portal the day they appear, so the bookkeeper is never the one chasing PDFs.

Books level with the business Yesterday's takings from the till system compared with what Xero recorded, so a gap is one day old instead of one quarter.

Xero automates the ledger, not the paperwork behind it

Xero does a great deal on its own, and all of it is worth switching on first.

Bank feeds bring transactions in from the bank automatically, so nothing gets keyed. Bank rules code the recurring ones for you: the parking, the bank charges, the same supplier every month, categorised on sight. Repeating invoices go out on a schedule without anybody remembering. Invoice reminders chase late payers with polite emails you never have to write. The reconciliation screen suggests a match for most lines before you look at them.

The pattern in all of it is that Xero acts on things that have already reached Xero. A bank rule needs a bank statement line. A reminder needs an invoice that exists in the system. A repeating invoice needs somebody to have set it up once.

None of it can go and get anything. The supplier invoice behind a login on a merchant portal, the payout breakdown on the card processor's dashboard, the daily total the till system will only ever show on a screen: Xero has no way to reach any of them and never claimed it did. Somebody fetches them, and that somebody has a chair.

The month can close itself as it goes

Take the fetching away and the shape of the month changes. Instead of a reconciliation done in one sitting three weeks late, the books stay level with the business.

Yesterday's takings read off the till system's dashboard and compared with what Xero recorded, so a gap is a one-day problem rather than a quarter-long mystery. Tuesday's payout from the card processor broken back down into the sales it covers, which is the most tedious job in retail bookkeeping and the one nobody volunteers for.

Supplier invoices collected from each account portal the day they appear and filed against the right bill. Bills falling due this week checked against what is actually in the account before anyone approves a payment run. The job or stock figures in the operational system compared with the ledger while the difference is still small enough to explain.

There is a line worth drawing here. Reading a portal and writing a note into the books is safe, and running it nightly beats running it monthly. Paying a bill, sending a customer a demand or filing a return are a different kind of act, and each of them should end with a person clicking the button.

Reconciling does not need a person in the room

The merchant portal gets opened, the invoice gets found, and it gets carried to where the ledger can see it. All three happen on a Tuesday evening, and none of them is a decision.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the card processor, the till system or the supplier's account portal, reads what is on the screen, and writes the result into Xero or the sheet your accountant works from. Because it drives the browser instead of an API, it reaches the systems that never built an integration, which is most of the older ones.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it partway. Anything that moves money or reaches a customer is drafted and waits for you.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names the sites it opens.