This is how we got Claude to do some of our actual work in Xero.

Not answering questions about the numbers. Doing the job, drafting bills, reconciling bank lines, checking expense claims.

For an accountant it’s the simplest productivity win I’ve found this year, and the setup is easier than it sounds. One of the three ways is a single click.

Watch it work first. Then I’ll show you all three.

A $4,500 payment to SMART Agency sitting on the reconcile screen, with two open bills for $2,000 and $2,500. Claude found both, ticked them, and Xero came back with "Totals match".

In the video I set all three up and run them on real tasks. A GST review, a page of bank reconciliation, a batch of staff expenses. Watch it, then keep this email as your cheat sheet. The setup guide is further down and every prompt is in one doc.

Don’t pick by features. Pick by the job.

1. The Claude connector. Settings, Connectors, search Xero, connect. One click, free. It reads your numbers and can build you a report or answer "who owes us money". It can’t change a thing.

Use it when the job is answering questions. A client rings and asks where they’re at. This is the one.

2. The Xero MCP. Xero’s own official connection. More setup, and AU$10 a month per organisation. But it’s fast, it can draft bills, invoices and journals, and you set its permissions inside Xero. It can’t reconcile.

Use it when the job is a review. Month-end journals, a GST check before the BAS, a batch of bills to draft for someone to approve.

3. The built-in browser in Claude Cowork. Claude opens Xero and uses it the way you do, through the screen. Slower. But it’s the only one that can reconcile and check expenses.

Use it when the job is the clicking. The screens the other two can’t reach.

Takeaway: none of them does everything. Ask questions with the connector, draft and review with the MCP, and use the browser for the screens the other two can’t reach.

This is the one that does the actual bookkeeping. Open Claude Cowork, click the browser button and sign in to Xero yourself. Claude works on the left. Xero changes on the right.

A page of bank lines took about six minutes. It matched what it could and left the unclear ones for me, with a note on each. That log is the bit I’d show a client, not the speed, the fact that there’s a written reason next to every line.

Then it saved the approved claims to a spreadsheet, ready for the next pay run.

Both prompts, word for word, are in one doc. Copy them into Cowork and change the rules to suit how you work, because the prompt is the workflow. Write down how you check things today, turn it into rules, and save it to a Cowork project per client so it builds up over time.

This is the fiddly one, so here’s every step. Do it on the demo company first. It’s free there.

Mine read 88 bank transactions and 92 bills and invoices in 29 seconds. First thing it flagged was a $4,500 bank wire coded to Legal expenses with $409 of GST claimed on it. A wire from a lender has no GST.

Don’t connect anything to a real client yet. Open the demo company and pick one job.

One job, one client, one month. The practices I watch get stuck are the ones trying to roll out "AI" instead of automating a single check they already do by hand.

The permissions live in Xero, not in the AI’s good behaviour. With read-only scopes, Xero refuses any change, whatever Claude tries.