How to export expenses from Xero: spending, claims and receipts

There's no single "export expenses" report in Xero. What you can export depends on which expenses you mean: everything coded to your expense accounts, spending per supplier, or the expense claims your team submitted. Spending by account or by supplier exports straight to Excel. Expense claims take a detour through other reports, and Xero can't download receipts in bulk.

Quick answer

You want	Use	What you get
Every expense transaction for a period	Account Transactions, filtered to your expense accounts > Export	Excel, PDF or Google Sheets, one row per transaction line, grouped by account
How much you spent with each supplier	Expenses by Contact report > Export	One row per contact, net of tax, with optional comparison periods
Expense claims by employee or status	Purchases > Expenses, plus the Expense Claim Detail report	On-screen lists. The report covers unpaid claims by employee.
Supplier bills as a file	Purchases > Bills > Export bills	CSV, one row per line item, up to 500 bills per export
All receipts in one download	Not possible in Xero today	See receipts below

Export all expenses with the Account Transactions report

For a list of everything you spent money on, run the Account Transactions report on your expense accounts. It picks up every kind of transaction coded to them: bills, spend money, card payments and approved expense claims.

Go to Reporting, then All reports, and open Account Transactions.
Under Accounts, select the expense accounts you want, for example all of them or only Travel and Entertainment.
Set the Date range and click Update.
Click Export and choose Excel.

You need the administrator, standard + reports or viewer role to run and export reports. If you'll want the same file again next month, click Save as, then Custom, to keep the layout.

Columns worth adding

Contact or Contact Group. Sort, group and filter by supplier. Manual journals have no contact, so that field stays empty for them.
Related account. The other side of each entry, so for an expense line it tells you where it was paid from or owed to, such as a bank account, a credit card or accounts payable.
Account code. Handy if you pivot the data in Excel or map it to a budget.

Things to know about this file

Dates follow the accounting basis. On accrual, bills count from their bill date and expense claims from the date they were approved. On cash basis (under More), transactions count from the date the money left the bank.
Only what's in the books. Claims that are still waiting for approval, and bank lines nobody has reconciled yet, aren't transactions in Xero, so they don't appear.
Tracking categories work as filters. If you track departments, projects or locations, use Filter to export the expenses for one of them.

Export expenses by supplier

To see who you spend money with, use Xero's Expenses by Contact report. It lists each contact you spent money with or raised a bill with during the period.

Go to Reporting, then All reports.
Under Payables and receivables, click the menu icon next to Income and Expenses by Contact, and under Common formats choose Expenses by Contact.
Pick a Date range, add comparison periods if you want this month next to previous ones, and click Update.
Click Export.

Amounts are net of tax. Use Filter to limit it to certain accounts, contacts or contact groups, and Grouping/Summarising to group suppliers by contact group. The top-10 chart only exports to PDF, so the Excel file has the table without it. The table total includes credit notes from suppliers and the chart total doesn't, so the two can differ.

Expense claims

Claims your team submits through Xero Expenses live under Purchases, then Expenses:

All tab: Expenses admins and approvers see every claim in the organisation and can click Filter to pick statuses (including partly paid and declined) and employees. Submitters see the claims they've submitted and how much is still to be paid.
Explorer tab: totals and number of claims by account or by employee, as a chart. Expenses admins only.
Your own tab: the claims you submitted yourself, filtered by type (personal money, company money, mileage).

Xero's help covers these screens for reviewing claims, not for exporting them. For a report, run the Expense Claim Detail report, which lists unpaid claims by employee for a date range. For approved claims, paid or not, use the Account Transactions export above: approved claims are posted to the expense accounts their items were coded to.

Receipts

Xero can't download all the receipts or attachments from expense claims in one go. You open each claim to view its receipt. A bulk download is an open request on Xero's Product Ideas forum, and in June 2026 Xero replied that it has no plans or timeframe to share yet. If you need every receipt for an audit or a reimbursement pack, keep the originals somewhere else as well, for example a shared folder, or ask your accountant which receipt app they connect to Xero.

Export bills to CSV

If "expenses" for you means supplier bills, Xero has a direct export:

Go to Purchases, then Bills, and pick the tab you want, such as Awaiting Payment or Paid.
Optionally click Search and set a start and end date, or Filter for overdue bills.
Click the menu icon next to New Bill and choose Export bills, then Export.

You get a CSV with one row per bill line, in the same format Xero uses for importing bills. Each export holds at most 500 bills, so do it in batches by tab or date if you have more. Users with the sales and purchases role can export bills too, but some details, such as contact addresses, are left out. More detail in where every Xero export lives.

Which one to use

Your accountant wants every expense for the year: Account Transactions on the expense accounts, with Contact and Related account added.
Analysing spend by category: the same export, then a pivot table on the account column. For totals only, the Profit and Loss.
Finding your biggest suppliers: Expenses by Contact, with a comparison period.
Chasing who's owed what for claims: Expense Claim Detail, or the All tab in Expenses filtered by status.
Moving bills into another system: Export bills to CSV.

Getting your expenses every month without exporting

Each of these is a manual export, and Xero's standard report screens have no schedule option. Reportpost can do the regular part for you: connect Xero (read-only), choose the Profit and Loss, pick last month, a day and a time, and add up to 20 recipients. Each send pulls fresh figures and attaches a PDF, Excel or CSV with every expense account and its total. The people who get it don't need a Xero login.

Settings that help with expenses:

Trends. Put last month next to as many as 11 earlier months to spot the costs that keep creeping up.
One department or project. If you track departments, projects or locations, a schedule can filter the Profit and Loss to one tracking option, so each manager gets their own spending. Only the Profit and Loss is filtered. Other reports in the same email cover the whole organisation. A filtered Profit and Loss shows one period, without comparison columns.
Cash or accrual. Pick the basis you report on, the same choice as in Xero.
What's still to pay. Add the unpaid bills list, so whoever pays suppliers sees what's due, and the repeating bills list: every bill set to repeat in Xero, when it next runs and what it comes to per month. Both show the position on the day the email goes out.

It sends account totals, not the transaction list, so for line-by-line detail you still want the Account Transactions export above. You can try the demo with sample data, no signup needed. Plans start at US$12 a month for one organisation, excluding VAT, with a 14-day free trial.

Common questions

Can I export expense claims from Xero to Excel?

Xero's help articles don't describe an export from the Expenses screens. Use the Expense Claim Detail report for unpaid claims by employee, or export Account Transactions on your expense accounts for approved claims, alongside your other spending.

Can I download all expense receipts at once?

No. Receipts and attachments open one claim at a time. Bulk download is a requested feature that Xero hasn't scheduled.

Why is an expense claim missing from my export?

Claims only reach the books once they're approved, and on accrual basis they're dated by the approval date, so a claim approved after your date range falls into the next period. On cash basis, a claim only shows once it's been paid. Claims still awaiting approval only show under Purchases, then Expenses.

How do I export expenses by category?

Run Account Transactions on the expense accounts. It's grouped by account by default, so each category comes with its own subtotal. For totals only, export the Profit and Loss.

Can I export expenses to CSV instead of Excel?

Reports export to Excel, PDF or Google Sheets. Save the Excel file as CSV if another tool needs it. Bills export straight to CSV.