Guide · Xero automation
Most of the retyping around Xero can be automated: supplier invoices read from email into draft bills, sales invoices raised from your job system, overdue payments chased, and billing split across several Xero organisations. As of October 2026 a custom Xero automation costs NZ$500 to $5,000 for most jobs, or NZ$1,000 to $8,000 when messy documents need reading, plus support from NZ$99 a month. Check what Xero already does for free first.
Xero is good at the accounting. The time goes on getting information into it and chasing what comes out of it, and that's the part worth automating. In the businesses I see, it's rarely one big job. It's a person spending a couple of hours a day typing supplier invoices, or a month end that takes days because the invoices live in a different system.
Prices on this page are as of October 2026 and exclude GST.
Before paying anyone, check you're using what Xero already includes. Sounds odd coming from someone who builds automation, but a fair share of the Xero jobs I'm asked about are already solved inside it:
If those cover it, stop there. Custom work starts to make sense when they don't: forty suppliers with forty layouts, bills that need matching to jobs or purchase orders, or invoices that start life in a different system.
Custom automation handles the work that sits between Xero and the rest of the business, where the rules are yours and the input is messy. These are the jobs that come up most:
Most of this is plain rules-based automation. AI is only used for the steps that need reading and judgement, like pulling the lines off an invoice that's a phone photo of a printout. Rules where you can, AI where you must, because rules are cheaper and they don't have off days.
Most Xero automation is NZ$500 to $5,000 as a fixed price, as of October 2026. These are the ranges from the pricing page that Xero work falls into.
| The job | Range | Typical time |
|---|---|---|
| Automation between Xero and the tools you already run | NZ$500 to $5,000 | Under a week to 4 weeks |
| Reading invoices and documents in many formats into Xero | NZ$1,000 to $8,000 | 2 to 5 weeks |
| A custom system with Xero as the accounting end | NZ$4,000 to $15,000 | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Hosting, monitoring and support | From NZ$99 a month | Ongoing |
Where in the range a job lands depends mostly on the input. An automation that reads one supplier's PDF into Xero is a few days of work. One that handles forty suppliers, matches purchase orders and routes approvals is a few weeks.
AI usage on top is small. Reading about a thousand typed invoices a month costs roughly NZ$6 to $11, based on published model prices as of October 2026, and I pass it on at cost.
An NZ-wide air-conditioning company now does its month-end billing across four Xero organisations in under an hour of checking, down from the better part of a day per entity.
The company runs regional entities, each with its own Xero organisation, and its old job-management tool couldn't be shaped to that. Quotes, purchase orders and month-end billing spilled into spreadsheets and re-keying. The new system was built in stages from February 2026, and the Xero side does three things:
The same build replaced a job-management subscription that cost $1,200 a month. Read the full HVAC case study.
The rule for anything touching your books is that the automation drafts and a person decides.
Every automation should also have a process owner, the person whose task it took over, who checks the output and is the first to hear when something looks off.
Yes. An automation can watch the inbox the invoices arrive in, read each one whatever the layout, and create a draft bill in Xero with the supplier, lines, GST and the PDF attached. It should save them as drafts so a person approves them, and flag anything it is unsure of rather than guessing.
Not unless you want it to, and I'd advise against it for anything that moves money. The usual set-up creates drafts and leaves approval and payment with a person. The automation does the reading and typing, and you keep the decision.
The connection uses Xero's own sign-in, which you authorise and can revoke at any time from Xero's connected apps settings. Ask any builder which permissions their connection asks for, where the data goes after it leaves Xero, and whether there is a log of every change it makes. With me the answer to the last one is always yes.
As of October 2026, custom automation across Xero and the tools around it is NZ$500 to $5,000 as a fixed price for most jobs, and NZ$1,000 to $8,000 where documents in many formats need reading. Running it costs from NZ$99 a month for hosting and support, plus AI usage at cost, which for about a thousand invoices a month is roughly NZ$6 to $11. Prices exclude GST.
If the job is a simple trigger, such as posting a message when an invoice is paid, Zapier or Make is cheaper and you can set it up yourself. Custom automation is worth it when the work needs reading documents, matching against jobs or orders, handling several Xero organisations, or keeping a full audit trail.
Yes. MYOB has an API and the same kind of automation works there. The examples on this page use Xero because it is what most of the NZ businesses I work with run.
Show me the bit of the month you dread on a free 30-minute call. I'll tell you whether Xero can already do it, whether a simple tool will, or what a custom build would cost as a fixed price. Discovery is always free.
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