Bills & AP takes a supplier invoice from an inbox to a coded, published purchase invoice in Xero — without re-keying. Every company client has a dedicated bills inbox; AccountantOS reads each document, you review and code it, and one click posts it to Xero with the original attached.
The lifecycle
- Arrive. Forwarded to the client’s bills address, pulled from a connected client mailbox, or uploaded by hand.
- Extraction. AI reads supplier, invoice number, dates, net, VAT and gross, and holds the source document alongside.
- Review & code. Check the figures; code to the right Xero account, tax rate and tracking.
- Publish. One click creates the Xero purchase invoice with the source document attached — the evidence lives with the transaction.
Where bills come from
Three routes in:
- The forwarding address — each client’s own, predictable address. Forward to it, or have suppliers send direct:
bills+<clientslug>@accountantos.co.uk
# example
bills+meridian-co@accountantos.co.uk- Connected mailboxes — connect a client’s own mailbox (OAuth, Microsoft 365) and AccountantOS scans it for invoice attachments on a schedule.
- Manual upload — drag and drop, for anything that arrives on paper.
AI extraction
Extraction pulls the supplier name, invoice number, dates, net, VAT and gross, and lays them beside a live preview of the original so you verify at a glance — you correct what the model got wrong rather than typing everything from scratch.
Statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
extracting | The document has arrived and is being read |
ready | Extraction done; waiting for review and coding |
synced | Published to Xero as a purchase invoice, source attached |
failed | Extraction or publishing could not complete — open to see why, and retry |
voided | Cancelled; will not be posted (its audit trail remains) |
Supplier rules and bulk recode
Supplier rules remember how a supplier should be coded, so future invoices arrive pre-coded and need only a glance. Historic coding wrong across many bills? Bulk recode reassigns account or tax rate on a whole selection in one action.
The locked-period guard
Publishing a bill dated inside a locked Xero period stops and asks how to proceed rather than silently failing or breaking a closed period: open then re-lock (post on the true date), post just after the lock (first open period), or post then reverse into the next open period. The guard makes the choice explicit and deliberate.
Unpublish, void and audit
A published bill can be unpublished (with the failure reason shown if Xero refuses) or voided outright. Every state change lands in the bill’s audit trail — see also the API, which exposes bills read-only per client.