Add bills to Xero straight from your email

Did you know that you can add email files directly into your Xero account, attaching invoices and electronic paperwork directly to your transactions.

If you receive an invoice in your inbox, you can just forward it directly to your unique Xero email forwarding address and it will show directly in file manager. This allows you to quickly deal with new invoices and receipts, or make it avaliable for your bookkeeper and accountant within Xero.

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How it works

This feature is a simpler version of Hubdoc and is a good introduction to data capture if you haven't used it before. Once you're comfortable with how it works, learn more about the advanced functionality that Hubdoc provides.

Email bills to your organisation's unique email address to generate a draft bill. The bills must be an email attachment, and not embedded in the body of the email. HTML bills and e-invoices in the body of the email won't be accepted.

Xero will automatically generate and attach the emailed bill to a draft bill.

Xero uses your organisation’s base currency when creating the draft bill from the emailed bill. If your bill needs to be in a foreign currency, you’ll need to manually change the currency of the draft bill in Xero. To do this, you'll need to have a pricing plan with multicurrency included.

If Xero can read the emailed bill successfully, some fields – such as the Contact, Date, Total, Due Date, and Reference fields – will automatically populate. You’ll see a lightning bolt in the fields that have been automatically populated.

If you email multiple bills (up to 10) in a single email and Xero can read the bill successfully, separate bills are created in Xero.

The draft bill is set to Tax Inclusive, which overrides any organisation or contact defaults that are set. The correct tax amount will be calculated once an Account Code and Tax Rate rate are applied.

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File types you can upload

You can upload most standard file types into Xero, except executable, audio or video files. The maximum size is a total of 25MB per email. Accepted file types include:

Before you start

Find and copy your Xero bills email address. You can find the Xero bills email address on any status tab in the Purchases overview page.

1. In the Business menu, select Bills to pay.
2. At the top of the page, click Create bill from email or click the menu icon, then select Create bill from email.
3. Click Copy to copy your unique bills email address.
4. (Optional) Save the email address to your address book in your email program.

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Email a bill to your organisation

Once you've copied your Xero bills email address, forward any bills you've received from your suppliers to Xero.

1. From your email program, send your bill to your Xero bills email address.
2. Log in to your Xero organisation.
3. In the Business menu, select Bills to pay.
4. ​​Select the Draft tab.
5. Open the bill you’ve just created. Auto-generated bills are labelled forwarded bill and should automatically include the correct contact.
6. (Optional) If Xero doesn’t automatically suggest a contact, check that there aren’t any duplicate contacts or spelling errors in their name. Details of the bill can be entered or edited manually, using the side by side view.
7. Review the suggested details, indicated with a thunderbolt icon, to ensure the bill is correct.

   8. (Optional) Make any changes you need and enter any missing details.

    9. Click Save or Approve.

You can set up a rule in your email inbox settings to automatically forward emailed bills to your Xero organisation.

Some mail client servers reject emails sent to email addresses that include an exclamation mark. To remove an exclamation mark from your Xero bills email address, reset your files inbox email address.

If you’ve reset your files inbox email address, you need to update any auto-forward rules you've set up. This is because resetting your files email address also resets your bills email address.

If you have any other questions or we can help you with any Xero, personal tax, accounts or bookkeeping support,please get in touch. Email the team hello@thebusinesshut.co.uk or call 01858 289 189.

Thanks for stopping by,

Charlotte & The Business Hut Team