Xero

Xero

· #194 most-used

Your accounts, handled. Every invoice, bill, and payroll run.

FinanceAnalyticsHRProjectsAutomationDocuments

Xero is cloud accounting software used by small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers to manage invoices, bank reconciliation, payroll, and financial reporting in one place. Connect it to Actionist and your agents can create contacts, raise and send invoices, record payments, create bills, and react to financial events — all in plain language, without anyone opening a spreadsheet.

Average time saved
13 hours
per person · per month
2 workdays back

Eliminates manual work. Eliminates the manual loop of checking for overdue invoices, re-keying data between CRM and accounting, and chasing payments that should trigger automatically.

Schedule

What your Xero agent runs on autopilot

A week of scheduled jobs your Actionist agent will execute on your behalf.

28Scheduled jobs
7Agents at work
24/7Always on
Agents
TueThu
Tue
Wed
Thu
7a
8a
9a
10a
11a
12p
1p
2p
3p
4p
5p
6p
Multi-app workflows

Xero × every other app you use

End-to-end automations that span multiple apps — each one a real business outcome.

6Workflows
9Apps spanned
~37 hrsSaved / week
6Personas served
For customer success
Featured4 apps

Invoice dispute resolved in under 5 minutes

When a customer emails querying an invoice, your agent reads the invoice history in Xero, checks whether it was opened and when, cross-references the payment record, and posts the full audit trail to Slack — the support rep gets context, the customer gets a reply, and the dispute is closed before it escalates. No Xero login required, no digging through email threads.

~9 hrs / week

Time saved for your team — every week, on autopilot

The flow
Trigger·When a customer email arrives querying a specific Xero invoice
Result
Add dispute note to invoice recordPost dispute summary to #accounts-supportSchedule follow-up call if unresolved
The win
Saved per run
45 min
Runs / week
~12×
Every dispute logged with full evidence
Driven byCustomer Support Agent
ROI

Savings

What your team gets back — two angles: what you stop doing manually, and what that's worth.

Without Actionist

What you do manually today

With Actionist

What your agent runs for you

  • Sales
    23 min / week
    Manual invoice creation

    After closing a deal, reps email finance to request an invoice — the request sits in a queue for hours before anyone acts on it.

    Sales Agent
    0 min
    Agent raises invoice on close

    When a deal moves to Closed Won, the agent creates the Xero invoice and emails a draft to finance for one-click approval — the billing cycle starts in under a minute.

  • Marketing
    17 min / week
    Campaign spend guesswork

    Agency invoices arrive sporadically and get manually coded to campaigns — the marketing team never knows their actual spend until month-end.

    Marketing Agent
    0 min
    Real-time budget tracking

    The agent creates a Xero project per campaign and records each agency bill as it arrives — marketing sees live spend vs. budget from a Slack update, not a finance email.

  • Customer Support
    23 min / week
    Invoice dispute digging

    Support reps manually search Xero for invoice history when customers dispute a charge — taking 10–15 minutes of context-switching per query.

    Customer Support Agent
    0 min
    Agent surfaces invoice history

    When a dispute arrives, the agent fetches the Xero invoice audit trail and posts the full history to Slack in seconds — reps resolve queries without touching Xero.

  • Human Resources
    9 min / week
    Manual payroll record setup

    HR manually keys new hire details into Xero Payroll after onboarding — a 20-minute job per employee that is error-prone when done in bulk.

    Human Resources Agent
    0 min
    Agent creates employee on start date

    When a new hire is confirmed in the HRIS, the agent creates their Xero Payroll record automatically — payroll admin touches zero fields before the first pay run.

  • Finance
    17 min / week
    Overdue invoice chasing

    Finance manually reviews the aged debtors report each week and sends templated chasers — some slip through, others are chased too aggressively.

    Finance Agent
    0 min
    Personalised chasers triggered automatically

    When an invoice goes overdue, the agent sends a personalised chaser via Gmail with the exact amount and due date — finance only intervenes at 30 days.

  • Operations
    33 min / week
    Three-way match done manually

    Ops manually cross-checks supplier invoices against purchase orders and delivery notes before approving payment — a slow, error-prone bottleneck in the AP cycle.

    Operations Agent
    0 min
    Agent matches and codes bills on arrival

    When a supplier bill appears, the agent looks up the PO in Xero, confirms quantities match, and codes the bill to the correct account — approval is a one-click confirm, not a 20-minute audit.

  • Legal
    8 min / week
    Contract cost centre setup

    When a new contract is signed, legal manually asks finance to set up the cost centre in Xero — the process takes days and delays the first PO.

    Legal Agent
    0 min
    Account provisioned on signature

    When a contract is countersigned, the agent creates the Xero account and opens the first purchase order — the cost centre is live before legal has sent the countersigned copy to the client.

+ 100s of other Xero automations
Average monthly
13 hrs / person / month
Average monthly
13 hrs / person / month
Calculator

Calculate what your team saves

Team size
10 people
Hourly rate
$20 / hr
Hours saved / week
33
Hours saved / year
1,650
Annual ROI
$33,000

Based on Xero's typical team usage — the visible tasks plus a few other automations the agent runs: ~3.3 hrs / person / week of admin work automated.

Connect

How to plug Xero into Actionist

Pick the connection method that suits your environment.

The fastest path to a live Xero connection. Install the official Xero MCP server and your agent accesses invoices, contacts, bills, and payroll through a permissioned OAuth handshake — no tokens to manage, no scopes to audit.

1
Open the Apps tab

Find Xero in the Apps library and click Connect. MCP is selected by default.

2
Authorise in Xero

You are redirected to Xero's OAuth screen. Select the Xero organisation you want to connect and approve the requested accounting, payroll, and contacts scopes.

3
Test the connection

Actionist runs a read-only call to verify the handshake. You're ready.

Actions

45 actions your agent can call

Read and write operations available to your Actionist agent.

Triggers

10 events your agent can react to

Events your agent watches for, and the actions it kicks off in response.

Skills

Skills that pair with Xero

Reusable agent skills that work well alongside this app.

Xero

Managed OAuth integration for the Xero API — read and write contacts, invoices, payments, accounts, and payroll records without handling tokens directly.

MCP servers

MCP servers that work with Xero

Connect Actionist to MCP servers built for or around this app.

Xero
Official

Official Xero MCP server providing standardised access to the full Xero accounting API.

XeroAPI/xero-mcp-server

Community MCP server from XeroAPI that exposes accounting, invoicing, and contact management endpoints via the Model Context Protocol.

CollectiveSpend-collectivespend-smithery-mcp
Official

MCP server connecting CollectiveSpend to Xero for contact synchronisation — retrieve, create, and update Xero contact records from spend management workflows.

FAQs

Questions about Xero + Actionist

How do I connect Xero to Actionist?
Open the Apps tab, find Xero, and click Connect. The recommended method uses the official Xero MCP server — you are redirected to Xero's OAuth screen, select your organisation, approve the accounting and payroll scopes, and Actionist verifies the connection with a read-only check. The whole process takes under two minutes and requires no API tokens.
What Xero permissions does the agent need?
For full functionality — invoices, contacts, bills, payroll, bank transactions — approve the accounting and payroll scopes during the OAuth flow. If you only need invoicing and contacts, you can restrict to the accounting scope. Xero enforces organisation-level access: the agent can only act on the organisation you selected during authorisation.
Can the agent combine Xero with other apps in a workflow?
Yes — every workflow step can mix Xero with any other connected app. Common patterns include creating a Xero invoice when a HubSpot deal closes, recording a Xero payment when a Stripe charge succeeds, or posting a Xero overdue invoice list to Slack each Monday. The agent holds the context across all apps; you do not need separate automations for each handoff.
What Xero objects can the agent read and write?
The agent can read and write contacts, invoices, bills, credit notes, payments, purchase orders, quotes, bank transactions, bank transfers, inventory items, accounts, employees, payslips, and Xero Projects. It can also upload attachments and send invoices by email directly from Xero. For anything not covered, the API Request action gives access to any Xero API endpoint.
How do I avoid the agent creating duplicate invoices or contacts?
Use the Find Invoice or Find Contact actions before creating — they return existing records so the agent can update rather than duplicate. For contacts, the Find or Create Contact action handles both cases in a single step: it returns the existing record if one matches and creates a new one only when none does. For invoices, check for an existing draft before raising a new one using the contact ID and expected amount as lookup keys.
Can the agent send Xero invoices by email automatically?
Yes — the Send Sales Invoice by Email action dispatches the invoice from within Xero to the contact's registered email address. The agent can trigger this immediately after creating the invoice, after an approval step, or on a schedule such as the first of the month for recurring invoices. The email comes from your Xero account, not Actionist, so it lands in the customer's inbox with your branding.
How does the Overdue Sales Invoice trigger work, and can it loop?
The trigger fires once when a Xero invoice passes its due date without a recorded payment. To prevent the agent from sending a chaser every time it checks, build your workflow with a condition step that reads the invoice history and skips if a chaser was already sent in the last seven days. Alternatively, use a scheduled workflow that fetches all overdue invoices once per day and processes each exactly once rather than running on every trigger event.
What happens if I disconnect Xero from Actionist?
Actionist immediately revokes its access to your Xero organisation — no further API calls are made. Any workflows that include Xero steps will pause and surface an authentication error at that step. Your Xero data is unaffected; disconnecting Actionist does not delete or modify anything in Xero. To reconnect, go to the Apps tab and complete the OAuth flow again with the same or a different organisation.