Who this is for
A bookkeeper, finance manager or office manager who retypes expenses from a spend or receipt tool into Xero, or whose import lands expenses in the wrong account without their receipts.
Month-end coding of expenses takes days because receipts are not attached, lines land in a general account, and a re-run of the import double-counts the same expenses.
The result
A synthetic export of twelve expenses creates twelve draft bills, each with the agreed account and supplier and its receipts attached to that bill only, a missing or oversized receipt is flagged on a list, importing the same export again creates nothing, and a further expense from a supplier not on the approved list is held and creates no new contact.
What is included
- One expense export format feeding one Xero organisation as draft bills
- Field mapping for date, amount, currency, description, account and tax type taken from an approved mapping list
- Supplier matched to an existing Xero contact by a stored contact ID or contact number from an approved supplier list; an expense from a supplier that is not on the list is held and listed, and no contact is created automatically
- Receipt upload to the bill the expense belongs to, within the file count and size limits Xero documents for attachments, confirmed on the demo organisation
- A record of imported expense ids so a re-import creates nothing new
- Tests with twelve invented expenses on a Xero demo organisation, including a foreign-currency one and one without a receipt, plus a separate export of one further expense from a supplier that is not on the approved list
You receive
- The import as a pull request or exported configuration with the field mapping written out
- A test table: each expense, its bill, account, tax type and attached receipts
- A flagged list for missing, oversized or failed receipts and for expenses that could not be mapped
What is not included
- Approving, paying or authorising bills, or sending anything to a supplier: your finance owner does that in Xero
- Choosing account codes or tax types, or advising on what is a claimable expense
- Creating, merging or cleaning up supplier contacts in Xero: your bookkeeper adds or chooses the contact, and duplicate contacts are a separate job
- Reading text from receipts or fixing wrong amounts in the source
- Employee reimbursement, payroll and card-feed reconciliation
- Bookkeeping, tax, audit or any accounting advice, including deciding how a transaction should be treated in your accounts
- Changing posted, reconciled or locked-period transactions: your accountant or account holder decides and performs those
- Live changes: your authorised account holder applies any agreed change and holds the production keys
What we need from you first
- The name of the expense tool or export format and a list of its columns, with no real rows
- Three invented expenses: one with a receipt, one with two receipts, one with none
- Whether expenses may arrive in a foreign currency, and roughly how many different suppliers appear in a month
- Do not send credentials, bank details, invoices, customer records or confidential code in the first enquiry
Never send passwords, keys, customer records or confidential code in the first enquiry. Secure handover is agreed after scoping.
How we check it is done
- A synthetic export of twelve expenses creates twelve draft bills, and each bill's supplier, date, amount, currency, account and tax type equal the approved mapping.
- Each receipt file is attached to its own bill only, including the expense with two receipts; the expense without a receipt is flagged.
- Importing the same export again creates no bill; an export with one changed expense creates no new bill and flags the change.
- A separate export of one further expense from a supplier that is not on the approved supplier list creates no bill and no new contact, and appears on the held list with the supplier as exported; the contact count in the demo organisation is the same before and after.
- A receipt larger than the attachment size limit measured on the demo organisation, or a bill beyond the measured attachment count, is listed as failed and the bill itself still exists as a draft.
You inspect the named test evidence and sign off before payment. Your authorised account holder performs and verifies any live change, and decides what happens to records already posted.
When we would stop or decline
- Expenses carry no stable id and none can be added
- Receipts are not available as files and must be photographed or transcribed
- The same expenses must also be posted to a second accounting system
Questions
Will it approve or pay the bills?
No. It creates drafts for your finance owner to review, approve and pay in Xero under your own controls.
Can it read the receipt and fill in the amounts?
No. Amounts come from the export. Reading receipt images is not part of this scope.
What if a supplier is not in Xero yet?
The expense is held and listed with the supplier as exported. Your bookkeeper adds or chooses the contact in Xero and updates the approved supplier list; the import never creates a contact on its own.
What about expenses in a foreign currency?
The test set includes one. Rate handling follows the same rule as the foreign-currency invoice job and is agreed with your accountant.
Price and terms
From £395 · untested offer price. Fixed after the quote is agreed (from £395); payment after the agreed checks pass and you sign off. No payment before sign-off.
This is a new service with no published client results. The price is a starting point we have not yet tested with buyers. Nothing is ordered or charged by the enquiry. The full specification is on the Synthetic Industry catalogue.