How to export Xero reports to Excel or CSV automatically

A lot of people export the same Xero reports to Excel every week or month, then paste them into a workbook, a Power BI model or a client template. The export itself is simple. Doing it on time, every time, is the annoying part. Here's the manual route and a way to have the files arrive on a schedule.

The manual way in Xero

Go to Accounting, then Reports, and choose the report.
Set the dates, the basis (cash or accrual, where it applies) and any comparison columns.
Click Update.
Click Export and choose Excel (or PDF).
Save the file, rename it, and drop it into the right folder or email it.

It's reliable but it's a manual job, and when you need six reports for each of several organisations, it takes a while.

What Reportpost does

With Reportpost, you connect Xero (read-only), pick the reports and the period, and choose a schedule: weekly, monthly or quarterly, on a day and hour in your timezone. When it runs, we fetch fresh figures and email them to up to 20 recipients. For spreadsheet use you can choose:

Excel workbook. One file, with one sheet per report.
CSV. One file per report.
PDF plus Excel or PDF plus CSV, if you also want a readable copy.

You can choose from the Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Aged Receivables Summary, Aged Payables Summary, Bank Summary, Trial Balance, Executive Summary and Budget Summary, plus lists of unpaid invoices, invoices raised in the period, draft invoices and unpaid bills. The invoice and bill lists are especially handy in CSV, since they're one row per document.

What it isn't

To be clear about it: Reportpost delivers files by email. It's not a direct database connector, and it's not a Power BI connector. It doesn't write to a data warehouse or refresh a Power BI dataset on its own. If you need live, queryable data, you'd want an API-based tool built for that.

What it does well is the common middle ground. A scheduled email with a CSV or Excel attachment can be picked up by a person, a shared mailbox, or a rule that saves attachments to SharePoint, OneDrive or a network folder. Power BI can then read from that folder. That setup is yours to build, and we don't provide the folder step, but plenty of finance teams find it enough.

Consistent files for spreadsheets

If your workbook formulas read from fixed positions, use the same period every time (for example last month) and the same comparison columns, so the layout doesn't shift. Comparison columns, 1 to 11 previous periods, are available on the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet only. Cash or accrual can be set for the Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance.

Things to know

It sends the standard Xero layouts. Custom layouts aren't available through the Xero API, so the structure matches Xero's standard reports and not a customised version.
Aged summaries and invoice lists are built from invoices, and totals match Xero, with credit notes, overpayments and prepayments netted off. The layout differs a little from Xero's own export.
If the figures matter, schedule the send after the books are reconciled.

If you need a PDF pack as well

For a readable version alongside the data, choose PDF with Excel or CSV. If you export PDFs from Xero yourself, our free Combine Xero reports PDF tool merges them into one pack with a cover, contents and page numbers, entirely in your browser.

Cost

US$12 a month for one organisation, US$39 for 10 and US$99 for 40, excluding VAT. The 14-day trial needs no card.

See how Reportpost works