Claude + Xero guides for NZ businesses
Ask who owes you money, find the expenses you forgot to enter, and have Claude draft invoices and bills for you to approve.
Blake HarknessFounder, Harkness AIFacts checked 19 September 2026
Guide 1 · The setup I use for my own invoices
The one in Claude’s connector directory, part of the Claude for Small Business plugin since 15 September 2026, only reads. It answers questions, but it can’t draft a single invoice. The other two can.
Reads only
Made by Xero, added from Claude’s connector directory
Step up · free
Made by Harkness AI, a free download for Claude Desktop
Reads and drafts
Made by Xero, open source on GitHub
My pick: only want answers? Start with the connector in Claude. Want Claude to do the admin? Set up Xero’s MCP server with the steps below, or skip the Custom Connection with my free connector.
You, or whoever looks after your IT, creates a Custom Connection in Xero’s developer portal and names the business owner as the authorising user. The owner gets an email and approves it. That gives you a client ID and secret, and anyone holding them can draft in your books. So they live in Claude Desktop on one person’s computer, never in an email or a shared folder.
A Custom Connection to Xero’s Demo Company is free. It’s full of fake invoices, resets every 28 days and can be switched to the New Zealand version. Draft a week of invoices there before the owner buys the real connection, NZD $10 a month + GST.
To draft invoices and bills, Claude needs three scopes: accounting.invoices, accounting.contacts and accounting.settings.read (to look up your accounts and tax rates). Leave payments, bank transactions, journals and payroll off: the server’s payment and bank transaction tools write live records, not drafts. Put the same three in the XERO_SCOPES setting, or the server asks for its full default list.
Your Xero contacts are personal information under the Privacy Act 2020. On a personal Pro or Max plan, check the model-training setting under Settings > Privacy. Team and Enterprise plans run on commercial terms, where that setting doesn’t apply.
Every invoice, bill, quote and credit note the server creates is a draft, and it has no tool to approve or email one. Claude Desktop also asks before it uses a tool, so you see each request first. Then someone opens the draft in Xero, checks it and approves it. That person is your safety net, so keep it that way.
Each line on a draft needs a tax rate from your Xero list, and Claude picks it, so check the GST on every draft. Check the due date too: the server’s create tool has no due date field, so drafts take your default payment terms. Neither connector does your GST return, and the one in Claude even has a US 1099 report tool. Your GST return and anything you file with IRD stays with you and your accountant.
On the Demo Company, have Claude draft one invoice, then open it in Xero and check the contact, every line, the GST and the due date. Ask a question you already know the answer to, like “Who owes me money more than 60 days overdue?”, and check it against the Aged Receivables report. Once both match a few times in a row, connect your real books.
Free download · Claude Desktop
I built it for practices and owners with more than one Xero organisation, and for anyone who wants Claude to read the bills behind the numbers.
Mac or Windows, about 10 minutes. Provided as is, with no support. The download asks for your name, business and email. The guides on this page never do.
Guide 2 · The approach I use on my own books
Xero only sees the accounts in its bank feeds. Anything paid from a personal account, or a card that isn’t in Xero, is invisible unless someone types it in. That’s where deductible costs hide: phone, fuel, software, a share of home power.
Claude lines your bank transactions up against the bills and bank transactions already in Xero, by supplier, amount and date, and flags anything with no match. You check the gaps before anything goes in.
Every account and card. Tick the ones already in Xero’s bank feeds. The rest are where the gaps are.
From internet banking, export three months of transactions as a CSV file for each account that isn’t in Xero.
Any connector from Guide 1 can read your bills and bank transactions. The one in Claude is read-only. With the others, the prompt below still tells Claude not to change anything. The Demo Company is there for a practice run.
Attach the CSV files, fill in the brackets and paste this in.
I've attached bank exports for [accounts] from [start] to [end]. You're connected to my Xero organisation. 1. List every debit that looks like a business cost, grouped by supplier. Mark anything monthly. 2. From Xero, pull my bills AND my bank transactions for the same period. 3. Match on supplier, amount and date, allowing a few days either way. 4. Table everything with no match: date, supplier, amount, likely GST treatment, suggested expense account. Don't guess business-use percentages - ask me. Don't create or change anything in Xero.
Do one, check its total matches the receipt, then the rest. With Xero’s MCP server or my connector, Claude can draft each missing bill for you to approve in Xero. The connector in Claude can’t draft, so there you type them in.
Bank statements are about the most sensitive data you’ve got. Use a paid Claude plan, check its model-training setting, and delete the CSV files when you’re done.
Video · 9:28
Recorded in April 2026 on the Xero MCP server route from Guide 1. New Custom Connections now use Xero’s granular scopes, so tick the three in step 3, not the ones on screen.
Prefer reading? The written guide covers the same setup.
Results so far
By the end of the day we had our website SEO, wholesale invoice checks and supplier pricing all running through Claude, plus payroll, emails, business branding, lightspeed and so much more!!
Questions
There are three ways. The quickest is the Xero connector in Claude’s connector directory: click Connect, sign in to Xero, pick one organisation and allow it. It reads your numbers but can’t change anything. To have Claude draft invoices and bills, use Xero’s open-source MCP server with a Xero Custom Connection in Claude Desktop, or my free Xero connector for Claude Desktop, which takes about 10 minutes to install.
It’s Xero’s own open-source server (XeroAPI/xero-mcp-server on GitHub) that lets Claude Desktop or Claude Code read from and write to one Xero organisation. It has 51 tools. Invoices, bills, quotes and credit notes are always created as drafts, and it has no tool to approve or email them. It runs on a Xero Custom Connection, which costs NZD $10 a month + GST and is free on the Demo Company.
Yes, as drafts. The connector in Claude’s directory is read-only, so it can’t. Xero’s MCP server creates every invoice and bill as a draft for a person to check and approve in Xero. My free connector drafts invoices and bills once you switch writes on, and only reads until you do.
The Xero connector in Claude’s directory is free to add and works on any Xero business plan. Xero’s MCP server is free software, but it needs a Xero Custom Connection at NZD $10 a month + GST. My connector is a free download for Claude Desktop that doesn’t need a Custom Connection.
Not with Xero’s two connectors: each connects one organisation at a time. My free connector connects several organisations in one install and can answer across all of them at once. We set one 4-person accounting practice up with 8 client Xero files in a single connector.
It can be, with a few rules. Practise on Xero’s free Demo Company first. Give the connection the narrowest scopes, and leave payments, bank transactions and journals off, because those tools write live records rather than drafts. Keep a person approving every draft. Your Xero contacts are personal information under the Privacy Act 2020, so on a personal Claude plan, check the model-training setting.
No. Neither of Xero’s connectors does GST returns, and Claude picks the tax rate on each draft line, so check the GST on every draft. Your GST return and anything you file with IRD stays with you and your accountant.
The connector in Claude’s directory works in Claude on the web, desktop and phone. Xero’s MCP server and my connector run in Claude Desktop, on the computer you set them up on.
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We connect Claude to your Xero, safely, and show your team how to use it. So far that’s 8 client files in one connector for an accounting practice, and 5 entities and 16 staff for a finance team.
Last updated 19 September 2026