Syft Analytics vs a simple scheduled report emailer for Xero
People searching for a way to email Xero reports automatically usually end up at the same two answers: Syft Analytics, which Xero has pointed users toward, and small apps that simply send the standard reports. They solve different problems.
What Syft Analytics is
Syft Analytics, which Xero bought in 2024, is a reporting and analysis platform that connects to your Xero data. It builds dashboards, charts and KPI views, lets you create custom reports and gives you tools for forecasting and, in higher tiers, consolidation across entities. It can schedule dashboards and reports to be delivered on a timetable.
It's a capable product. If you want to explore your numbers, slice them by tracking category, build graphs for a board meeting, or compare several companies side by side, it does things a plain emailer doesn't attempt.
The complaint users make
Xero's product ideas thread "Automatic generation and emailing of reports" has about 790 votes and has been open since 2014. Many of the comments say the same thing. They didn't ask for a dashboard platform. They want the profit and loss and balance sheet they already run, in the layout they already know, to arrive in someone's inbox on a schedule. Some commenters said Syft didn't solve this for them, mostly because it's built around its own reports and dashboards rather than the standard Xero ones.
What a simple report emailer does
An app like Reportpost does one thing. It connects to Xero with read-only access, pulls the standard reports at a set time and emails them as PDF, Excel or CSV. The reports available are 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. You pick the period (last month, month to date, last quarter, financial year to date, last 12 months and so on), add comparison columns for the profit and loss and balance sheet, and choose cash or accrual. It runs weekly, monthly or quarterly.
It doesn't have dashboards, charts, forecasts or consolidation.
How to decide
A scheduled emailer is probably enough if:
- You already know what reports you send and just want them to go out on time.
- The recipients are directors, clients or an owner who wants the usual numbers in a familiar layout.
- You would rather not learn another platform.
Syft is probably the better fit if:
- You need dashboards and charts, or want to dig into the data interactively.
- You need forecasting or multi-entity consolidation.
- Someone in the business will actually spend time in the tool.
Some firms use both. A bookkeeper might use Syft for advisory clients who want analysis and a simple emailer for everyone who just wants the monthly numbers.
Doing it by hand in Xero
If you only have a handful of reports to send and don't mind the time, the manual route works:
- Go to Reports, then All reports, and open the report.
- Set the date range, any comparison columns and the basis, then click Update.
- Export to PDF or Excel.
- Attach it to an email and send it.
It's free and simple. It doesn't scale well past a few clients, and it relies on someone remembering.
Price comparison
Syft's pricing depends on your plan, and Xero includes it with some plans for its partners, so check with Xero. Reportpost is US$12 a month for one organisation, US$39 for 10 and US$99 for 40, with a 14-day free trial and no card.
If you want to see what a Reportpost pack looks like before signing up, here is a sample PDF.