Does Claude work with Xero?

Yes. Xero has been one of the cleaner MCP integrations available since early 2026.

What you can do

Once connected, Claude can:

• Read your chart of accounts, contacts, invoices, bills, transactions, journals, reports
• Run reports (P&L, balance sheet, aged receivables, etc) and interpret them in plain English
• Categorise unreconciled transactions based on patterns it learns from your historical data
• Draft client emails with up-to-date invoice or payment information
• Cross-reference Xero data against other connected systems (Shopify orders, Stripe payments, etc)

With write scopes granted:

• Post journal entries (still review them, never auto-post without human approval)
• Create draft invoices and bills
• Update contact details
• Apply payments

What you can’t do

• Sign BAS submissions. That’s a registered tax/BAS agent’s job, requiring TPB-registered credentials. Claude can help prepare; it can’t sign.
• Override your role permissions. If your Xero user role can’t see payroll, neither can Claude when connecting as you.
• Access historical data beyond Xero’s API limits. Some endpoints cap at 2-3 years of history; this isn’t a Claude thing, it’s a Xero API thing.

Setup, briefly

1. In Xero, create a Custom Connection (Settings → Connected apps → API explorer)
2. Grant scopes, start with read scopes only
3. Save the Client ID, Client Secret and Tenant ID into your Claude Code .mcp.json
4. Restart Claude Code; verify with /mcp

Full walkthrough in Claude Code MCP servers for the Australian business stack.

Australian-specific notes

• GST handling is correct out of the box. Claude understands AU GST rates, GST-free items, BAS-excluded items.
• Multi-org Xero: each org gets its own MCP connection. Don’t try to share connections across orgs; the auth model doesn’t support it cleanly.
• Practice (advisor) connections: work, but you need to set permissions per client carefully. The same Claude session can reach data across all your client orgs if you’re not careful.

Cost

The Xero MCP server is free. You’re only billed for the Claude tokens used to process Xero responses. A typical session analysing a month’s Xero data uses 30-80k tokens, under $0.50 AUD on Sonnet 4.6 with caching.

Where this lands hardest for AU SMBs

• Monthly reporting prep, Claude pulls Xero data, drafts the client report, you review
• Bookkeeping triage, overnight agent identifies what needs the bookkeeper’s attention tomorrow
• BAS sanity checks, Claude verifies the prepared BAS against underlying transactions
• Reconciliation suggestions, Claude proposes account codes for unreconciled transactions

If you’d like us to wire this up for your practice or business, that’s literally our Quick Start, happy to scope a free audit call.