If you're processing supplier bills in Xero, you know the routine: open the bill, find the supplier, type the invoice number, enter the date, add line items, check the tax codes, save, and move to the next one. When you're doing this for 10 bills, it's tedious. When you're doing it for 100, it's a serious time problem.

Most businesses that process a meaningful volume of supplier bills have the data already — in a CSV, an Excel file, a PDF, or an export from their supplier or procurement system. The question is how to get that data into Xero without re-keying it.

How Xero handles bill imports natively

Xero can import bills using its Conversion Toolbox or the standard CSV import. Both require a CSV file in a specific format.

The Conversion Toolbox approach

Xero provides a Conversion Toolbox designed for migrating data from other systems. You download Xero's template CSV, populate it with your bill data, and upload it. Xero creates the bills from the file.

The template has specific required columns: ContactName, InvoiceNumber, InvoiceDate, DueDate, Description, Quantity, UnitAmount, AccountCode, and TaxType. Every column name needs to match exactly. Every value needs to be in the format Xero expects — particularly dates and tax codes.

Where this gets difficult

Supplier bills rarely arrive in a format that maps directly to Xero's template. Your suppliers send their own formats — their own column names, their own date formats, their own way of structuring line items. Every supplier is different.

The reformatting work sits with you. Open the supplier file, rename columns, rearrange data, split or combine fields, convert dates, map tax codes to Xero's terminology, and save as CSV. For each supplier format, this is a manual process.

Bills with multiple line items need a specific row structure — the supplier name and bill number repeat on each row. If your supplier's export has one row per bill with multiple amount columns, you need to restructure the data before Xero will accept it.

If any row contains an error, Xero rejects the entire batch. Fix and re-upload.

Practical limits

Xero's import works best for simple, clean data in small batches. For high-volume AP workflows — dozens of suppliers, hundreds of bills per week, varying formats — the native import becomes a significant time investment in data preparation.

Automating bill imports with EntryRocket

EntryRocket removes the reformatting step entirely. You send your supplier bill files as-is, and they appear in Xero as bills.

How it works

Email your bill file — CSV, Excel, PDF, XML, whatever format your supplier or AP system produces — to your dedicated @entryrocket.com address. Your custom reader maps the data from your supplier's format to Xero's bill fields: supplier contact, bill number, date, due date, line items, amounts, tax codes, and account codes.

The bills appear in Xero as drafts, ready for review and approval. You get a confirmation email showing what was imported.

Handling multiple supplier formats

If you receive bills from 15 different suppliers, each with a different layout, you can have a separate reader for each one. Each reader is built around that specific supplier's format. You email the file, it's routed to the right reader automatically.

Business rules beyond simple mapping

Bill imports often need more than just field mapping. EntryRocket's readers can apply business rules to transform data as it's imported. Common examples include:

  • Splitting freight costs across multiple department or tracking categories
  • Deducting agreed commission percentages or rebates before the bill is created
  • Applying currency conversion rates
  • Calculating and adding handling or processing fees
  • Mapping supplier-specific product codes to your Xero account codes

These rules are built into your reader once and applied automatically to every import.

Volume and speed

There's no practical limit. Whether your file has 5 bills or 500, the process is the same — email and wait less than a minute. EntryRocket processes over 3,000 records per hour.

When automation makes sense for bills

If you're processing fewer than 10 supplier bills per week and they're all in clean CSV format, Xero's native import may be enough.

Beyond that threshold — higher volumes, multiple supplier formats, Excel or PDF files, bills that need data transformation — automation pays for itself in the time it saves and the errors it prevents. A logistics company processing 200 carrier invoices a week, or a retailer receiving bills from 30+ suppliers in different formats, is exactly the type of business where the ROI is immediate.