Xero Release Notes

Analytics:

• Use Budgets (Early access) to make budgets from actuals, apply adjustments with history log, apply tracking category filters, and create profit and loss budgets.

Automatic (auto) bank reconciliation:

• When you edit a transaction, we now show you JAX is learning from the update and we let you know once this update is saved.

• You can now filter transactions reconciled by each automatic method (match, rule, memory and prediction) and those reconciled manually.

Bills:

• When you save a bill for a new supplier, you can now save the bill details as the purchase default settings for that supplier.

Connected apps:

• You can now automate routine financial tasks with the Claude for Small Business plugin. Generate reports, draft invoice reminders and prep month-end closes using your Xero data with plain language prompts or scheduled workflows.

Documents:

• Files is now called Documents and is located under the Accounting menu. There’s no change to any of your data or functionality. …

Automatic (auto) bank reconciliation:

• If your organisation is on the Xero Ignite plan, you can now add auto bank reconciliation to your subscription via the AI Automate add-on, for a fixed monthly price (Xero website).

• We’ve added auto bank reconciliation to the demo company, so you can try it out before you use it in your own organisation.

• We’ve released a new settings panel where you can change the auto bank reconciliation setting for all your bank accounts. It also shows you when the settings were last changed and by who.

Payroll:

• The new timesheets experience is available for payroll admins. Filter timesheets by status, view employees' draft timesheets and autofill timesheets with data from employees' previous timesheets.

Purchase orders:

• If a purchase order is partially billed and you don’t expect to receive the remaining items, close the purchase order short.

Reports:

• You can now set a group heading in a financial report template to use a report field. The heading updates automatically whenever the field's value changes. This works for both practice and client report fields, and you can still switch back to entering text manually. product ideas

User roles and permissions: …

Analytics:

• You can add individual AI commentary widgets to existing dashboards in Analytics.
• We've added AI-powered explanations to Benchmarks with Analytics. You can now get instant insights about your data and how it compares to your industry.

Bills, invoices, quotes, credit notes and purchase orders:

• You can now drag to fill line item details and use keyboard navigation in bills, invoices, quotes, credit notes and purchase orders, helping you enter repeated information faster.

Connected apps:

• Connect your Xero organisation to the Xero agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, then ask Copilot questions to get financial insights about your business.

Expenses:

• You can now click an expense claim to quickly see all the key details and approve or decline it without leaving the Expenses list.

Files:

• Smart Document Capture is now available in open beta on all Xero business plans. Smart Document Capture extracts key data and identifies possible matches between an uploaded document and existing transactions.

Homepage: …

Automatic bank reconciliation:

• When reviewing transactions, you can now view, add or delete files, and change the account code or tax rate for a transaction in the Reconciled transactions screen.

Bank reconciliation:

• You can now search by reference and payment reference on the Account Transactions tab of a bank account. product ideas

Homepage:

• We’ve added three new time periods to the net profit or loss widget. You can customise the time period to show this month, this quarter and this financial year. product ideas

Products and services:

• You can now show or hide item descriptions on the products and services list. product ideas

Xero Accounting app:

• You can now upload multiple files using the Xero Accounting app for iOS and Android.

Analytics:

• We added educational tours, tutorials and resources in Analytics.

• You can apply custom colour palettes to graphs in dashboards and visualisation, so your reporting can better match your brand.

• Dashboard widgets can now have custom date ranges and be renamed.

• You can now compare industry benchmarks in dashboards and visualisations.

• The AI insights in Analytics now show plain language explanations of metrics in dashboard widgets and how they’re calculated.

Connected apps:

• Connect your Xero organisation to Claude using the Xero connector, then ask Claude questions to get financial insights about your business.

Invoices:

• You can now turn off surcharging in an individual invoice. product ideas

Purchase orders:

• You can now send a file as an attachment on purchase order emails.

Analytics:

• We released benchmarks, which lets you compare business performance against similar businesses in your industry.
• We've added prior period comparison for income versus expenses in visualisations.
• You can now schedule visualisation, dashboard and business health scorecards reports to be automatically sent out.

Practice Manager:

• All of the 2026 income tax forms are now available for preparation and electronic filing using gateway services (GWS).

• We’ve updated the 2026 forms in the following areas:

  • All returns

    • Show IRD number in history record when a tax return is filed

    • Improvements on how tax return front cover address is populated

  • IR3

    • Removed transitional tax rates
    • Added 2026 tax rates
    • Added a warning when there’s data imported from another return
    • Removed IETC part year calculation
    • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
    • Included subsequent renumbering
    • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)

  • IR3N

    • Removed transitional tax rates 
    • Added 2026 tax rates
    • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields 
    • Included subsequent renumbering …

Bank reconciliation:

• In find and recode, if a lock date is set for all users, you can now include the transactions in the locked period in the search results. product ideas
• You can now select unpaid credit notes in match or find and match in the Reconcile tab – you don’t have to apply a cash refund first.product ideas

Expenses:

• You can now turn expense email notifications on or off. product ideas

Invoices:

• It's now possible to request an online deposit from your customers, either as a percentage of the total invoice or a fixed amount. product ideas …

Analytics:

• We renamed "Analytics powered by Syft" to "Analytics". The functionality and insights into your businesses' financial information remain the same.

Payroll:

• You can now bulk upload your employees’ past earnings with a file from your previous payroll system or a template provided in Xero.

Purchase orders:

• We’ve improved the purchase order description page with a new layout and options to customise columns.
• You can now Approve & email, or Approve & print PDF from the purchase order approval menu.
• You can now see quantity on hand for items on the description page.

Bills:

• We’ve made it easier to find and select the automated ways to enter bills in Xero to help save time, improve accuracy and reduce manual work.

Connected apps:

• You can now connect Xero to your Etsy account to automatically sync your daily Etsy sales and easily reconcile your deposits.

Fixed assets:

• You can now apply the Investment Boost tax deduction to eligible assets purchased from 22 May.

 

Reports:

• We've changed the layout editor of reports to allow formula rows to show as percentages.
• We've added the ability to add custom reports to an adviser pack in Xero. Accountants can now prepare report templates using reports already available in the organisation.

Xero Accounting app:

• Add bills in the Xero Accounting app quickly and easily by capturing photos or selecting files from your mobile device. Xero creates a draft bill with key details entered and the source document attached.

Online payments:

• We’ve added Tap to Pay on iPhone as a payment option on your invoices. Tap to Pay on iPhone allows you to get your invoices paid faster by giving you the ability to take payment from customers on the spot.
• We’ve added Tap to Pay on Android as a payment option on your invoices. Tap to Pay allows you to get your invoices paid faster by giving you the ability to take payment from customers on the spot.

Xero Accounting for iOS and Android: 

• We've introduced an onboarding experience that reduces the steps required to set up products and features in the Xero Accounting app.
• We’ve added the ability to set up an invoice template in the Xero Accounting app.

Xero HQ & Practice Manager:

• Client insights now includes gross profit margin figures. You can view the previous month's data, enabling month-to-month and year-over-year comparisons.

Invoicing:

• The line item display is now more compact to help reduce horizontal scrolling
• The inventory dropdown now includes the first 100 items 
• You can add or reorder empty rows
• Column preferences are remembered for each invoice

Practice Manager:

• You can now update the start and due dates for multiple jobs at the same time from within Job manager. product ideas
• All of the 2025 income tax forms are now available for preparation and electronic filing using gateway services (GWS).
• We've updated the 2025 forms in the following areas:

  • IR3

    • Added transitional tax rates 

    • Added IETC part year calculation 

    • Backdated ACC lump sum payments added to Summary of Earnings

    • KP11 Family Tax Credit from Work and Income no longer sent to IR, but will remain in the tax return as it’s used by the Working for Families schedule

  • IR3N

    • Added transitional tax rates 

    • Removed KP34 ‘Did you work in New Zealand?’

  • IR4

    • Removed KP23 ‘Did the company pay insurance premiums to any overseas insurer not carrying out business in New Zealand?’

    • Updated wording about the BEPS disclosure in KP37

  • IR6 …