How to Upload Invoices and Receipts to Xero

To upload invoices to Xero, open the Purchases menu, select Bills, click New bill and choose Upload bills. You can also email bills to your organisation’s own Xero address or drop receipts and invoices into the Documents inbox, where Xero’s Smart Document Capture reads them. Every route ends with a draft that someone checks before it’s approved.

In Xero, a supplier invoice you need to pay is called a bill. The routes differ in how much of that bill they read. Some fill in the supplier, date and total and leave every line to you. One reads each line. That difference in invoice capture decides how much checking is left after the upload.

This guide is for Australian business owners, bookkeepers and finance teams on Xero. You’ll need a Xero login that can create bills and a few real bills to test with. Every step below for how to upload invoices to Xero is taken from Xero Central, checked on 11 October 2026. For the bigger picture of what sits around this step, our guide to accounts payable automation for Xero covers approvals, checks and the tools that plug in.

Step 1. Sort your bills from your receipts

Work out what each document is before you upload it, because Xero files them in different places. A bill is a request to pay later. It goes on the Bills screen, gets approved and waits for payment. A receipt is proof you’ve already paid, usually on a card, so it becomes a spend money transaction that you match to the line on your bank feed.

The difference matters for GST too. The ATO says you need a tax invoice from the supplier to claim a GST credit on any purchase over $82.50, including GST (ATO: When you can claim a GST credit). Those credits are your input tax credits. A blurry photo of a receipt won’t hold one up.

Paper can go once it’s captured. The ATO accepts digital images of paper records as long as they’re true and clear copies. After that you don’t have to keep the paper (ATO: Manual or paper record keeping). Staff expense claims go through Xero Expenses instead.

Step 2. Upload invoices to Xero from the Bills screen

The Bills screen is the quickest way to add bills in bulk. Each file becomes its own draft bill with the document attached. On the web, Xero Central’s Upload bills into Xero article gives these steps:

1. In the Purchases menu, select Bills.
2. Click New bill, then select Upload bills.
3. Click Select files and pick your files. You can also drag and drop them into the box.
4. Review the files, then click Upload.

On your phone it’s the add icon on the Home or Purchases screen, then Bill, then Take or choose photo or Choose from files, then Upload.

Files need to be JPG, PDF or PNG and under 25MB. Bills can take a few minutes to appear.

When Xero can read the bill, it fills in the Contact, Date, Total, Due Date and Reference. Line items aren’t in that list. The draft is also set to Tax Inclusive, overriding your usual defaults. Xero only works out the correct tax once an account code and tax rate are applied. Foreign currency bills come in at your base currency until you change them.

Step 3. Email bills to your Xero bills address

Every Xero organisation has a unique email address that turns an attached bill into a draft. To find it, per Xero Central’s Email bills to your Xero organisation:

1. In the Purchases menu, select Bills.
2. Click New bill.
3. Click Copy your forwarding email address.

Forward bills to that address, then check Purchases, Bills, Draft tab. Bills created this way show “forwarded bill” in the Reference column.

You can attach up to 10 bills to one email with a 25MB total and Xero makes a draft for each. The bill has to be an attachment. Bills pasted into the email body and HTML emails won’t work. Logos and other attachments that aren’t bills go to your Documents inbox.

Emailed bills get a little more filled in than uploads: Contact, Date, Total, Due date, Reference and Description. If the supplier isn’t a contact yet, the draft says No contact. Fix that before you approve it. Where there are no supplier defaults, Xero predicts the account code from that supplier’s previous bills.

You can set an email rule to forward bills from known suppliers automatically. Xero recommends you don’t publish the address anywhere public.

Step 4. Scan receipts into Xero with Smart Document Capture

Smart Document Capture is Xero’s built-in reader for receipts, bills and other documents you put in the Documents inbox. Xero announced on 18 September 2026 that Files is now called Documents. It sits in the Accounting menu (Xero Blog). Older guides that say “Files” mean the same place.

There are three ways in, from Xero Central’s Upload a file to the document library:

• Web: in the Accounting menu, select Documents, then click Upload to Documents Inbox.
• Email: in Accounting, Documents, click Email to Documents Inbox and copy that address. Check which address Xero shows under Documents and under Bills before you forward anything.
• Phone: from the Home screen, tap the add icon, tap Document, then Take photos. You can take up to 10 at a time and upload them as separate documents or as one combined file.

Once a file lands, it shows as Processing while Xero reads it. Per Xero Central, it pulls out the contact, date, due date, tax treatment, total, reference and line items, with a description, quantity, price, tax rate and account code on each line. Xero’s July 2026 product update put that at about 30 seconds, down from a wait of up to 24 hours. Xero’s 18 September update says automatic tax extraction, which pulls the local tax rate from the document, is live. Tax number validation for Australia and the UK is due in the coming months. Creating bills straight into awaiting approval or awaiting payment is further ahead on Xero’s list.

Then the file’s State changes. Match means Xero found an existing transaction with the same date and amount, and clicking Match attaches the file to it. Review means there’s no match. You check the extracted fields, fix anything wrong and click Create transaction to make a spend money transaction, a bill, an invoice or a supplier credit note.

For a card receipt, that’s the whole flow: snap it, review it, create a spend money transaction and reconcile it. Extraction works on PDF, JPG and PNG files under 25MB and up to 10 pages. The review happens on the web.

Check your plan. Xero Central says Smart Document Capture is on all Xero business plans, but Xero’s Australian page lists Grow with “basic extraction”, while Comprehensive and Ultimate list it without that qualifier. Xero’s July post called the Australian release a beta. Neither its September update nor Xero Central mentions a beta now.

Step 5. Check every draft before you approve it

None of these routes approves a bill for you. Each one leaves a draft, and your check on that draft is where errors get caught. Go through these before you click Approve:

1. Fix any No contact drafts. A supplier misspelt two ways means two contacts and split history.
2. Look at the lines and tax rates. One tax-inclusive line on a bill that mixes GST-free and taxable items is the most common mistake. The worked example below shows what it costs.
3. Change foreign bills from your base currency.
4. Check the supplier and invoice number against what you’ve already paid. Xero warns when the same document is uploaded twice, but a supplier resending last month’s invoice as a fresh PDF is a different file. Our duplicate invoice checker can run over a list.
5. Compare the bank account on the invoice with the supplier’s earlier bills. A changed BSB on a familiar invoice is how bank account change fraud works. None of the three routes compares them for you.

If more than one person needs to sign off, our walkthrough of Xero bill approvals covers how Xero’s approval step works and where it stops.

Invoice data capture methods, cheapest to most complete

Invoice data capture ranges from typing a bill in yourself to software that reads and codes every line. The cheaper methods read the header: supplier, invoice number, dates and total. The fuller ones read the line items, where the account codes and GST treatment live. Here are the five options for Xero, as of October 2026:

Hubdoc is Xero’s separate capture app. It extracts the contact, date and amount and you enter the lines. Dext reads the header on its standard plan. Its line-item extraction is an add-on from $28.50 a month.

We’ve written separately about why Xero users still end up doing manual work after capture.

Worked example: one 14-line bill, three accounts

A food wholesaler sends a café group one bill with 14 lines totalling $1,196.21. Seven lines are basic foods and GST-free: milk, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, oats and bread. Two are taxable stock: soft drinks and potato chips. Four are taxable packaging and cleaning items. The last line is a taxable delivery fee.

Typed in by hand, that’s 14 lines, three account codes and two tax rates, every week.

Upload it or email it to your bills address and you get a draft with the supplier, date and $1,196.21 total filled in, set to Tax Inclusive. Now say someone codes it as one line to Cost of Goods Sold at GST on Expenses. Xero calculates $108.75 of GST. The real figure is $54.91. That’s a $53.84 overclaim on one bill. On a weekly supplier it adds up over a quarter.

Smart Document Capture does better here. It reads all 14 lines and suggests a tax rate and account code for each. If the reviewer clicks Create transaction without reading them, a wrong suggestion goes straight into the bill.

In Hubdoc you get the contact, date and amount, then enter the lines yourself.

An AP automation tool with line-item coding reads the 14 lines and codes each from the supplier’s history, so you only look at what it flags. For the GST logic behind this, see our guide to line-item coding for mixed GST and split invoices.

Common mistakes

Two mistakes the steps above don’t catch.

Sending the same bill two ways. A bill goes to the bills address, then someone snaps the paper copy into Documents as well. When Xero offers a Match, take it instead of creating a second bill.

Binning the paper before checking the photo. The ATO’s rule only covers true and clear copies. Open the upload and make sure the ABN, GST and total can be read before the paper goes in the bin.

Where Pulsify fits

Pulsify is built for supplier bills, not staff receipts. For card receipts, Xero’s own Smart Document Capture or Xero Expenses does the job. If you get a handful of bills a month, the free routes above are enough too.

Where it earns its place is the café bill. You forward bills to your Pulsify address and it reads all 14 lines, then uses line-item coding from that supplier’s history. The basic foods land in Cost of Goods Sold as GST-free and the cups in Packaging without anyone splitting them by hand. It flags duplicates and bank details that don’t match the supplier’s details in Xero or MYOB. Any Admin or Approver can approve by default. The multi-step approvals add-on ($40 per entity a month) routes a bill through steps. Then it posts it through our Xero and MYOB integrations.

Plans start at $69 a month for 100 documents, as of October 2026. Start a free 30-day trial and forward a week of bills. Or book a demo to find out how customers have saved hours per week after switching.

Sources: ATO: When you can claim a GST credit · Xero Central: Upload bills into Xero · Xero Central: Email bills to your Xero organisation · Xero Central: Match or create a transaction with Smart Document Capture

Further reading: How to Set Up Bill Approvals in Xero · Automated Line-Item Coding for Mixed GST and Split Invoices · Accounts Payable Automation for Xero · Invoice scanning software in Australia