Automate Xero financial reports in Excel (CFO guide)

Ever since the dawn of Excel in 1985, CFOs have relied on it to manage company finances. It’s dynamic, highly visual, and flexible enough to accommodate a range of different payment structures and needs.

Over its 40 years of evolution, Excel has adapted to do many things. But sadly, it still requires manual exports to interpret data from some of the most well-used SaaS platforms in modern business. This creates a serious latency problem for you as CFO.

By the time your team has manually exported your Trial Balance, Profit/Loss, and Aged Receivables into the appropriate tabs, cleaned the data, and updated links, the information is already out of date. It’s a static snapshot of the past that can provide useful data...but you might want more.

To streamline that month-end close, you might want to consider a Xero-Excel integration.

Why does manual financial reporting cost you money?

As a CFO, you are likely already painfully aware of how accurate financial reporting data needs to be. When you manually connect Xero to Excel, you and your team introduce a few potential points of failure that can compromise the integrity of your reports. Not to mention, the time spent on manual data cleaning and reintegration into Excel spreadsheets is time lost for other tasks.

We see a few points of failure with a manual Xero-Excel connection:

1. Manual copy-pasting breaks the chain of data, so if a number looks wrong at year-end, tracing it back to the original Xero transaction is a nightmare
2. Since reports are shared as static files, different versions will end up in different hands, so there is no single source of truth to strategise from
3. Come month-end, that data gathering and manual export becomes the focus, rather than the actual interpretation of the data

While a manual close can take hours, if not days, an automated one using a Xero-Excel integration takes minutes. Here’s how to set one up to start saving time immediately.

How to Connect Xero to Excel Using SyncHub

We’ve built this tool to set you up with a ‘set and forget’ pipeline between your Xero data and your Excel reports, with SyncHub as your middleware. With this software in place, you can break Xero free of any silo and start treating it as a live data feed.

Connect and centralise your data

Start by logging in to your SyncHub account and setting up an Xero-Excel integration. Follow the step-by-step guidelines in the integration process, making sure you have a destination Excel sheet ready to go.

Choose a sync frequency

Once you connect Xero to Excel, you can use SyncHub to configure your sync frequency. Alter it to match your reporting cycle, or choose a daily sync for near-real-time data. As a CFO, you might choose the latter simply to keep an eye on cash flow. Either way, your data will be fresh and ready to go with no manual cleaning require come month’s end.

Build your dynamic dashboards

For daily reporting and check-ins, use Power Query within Excel to connect to your SyncHub data source. This lets you build a single report template or structure, then hit ‘Refresh’ whenever you need it populated with the most up-to-date data.

Implement best practices with your finance team

Once you have the reporting aspect taken care of, it’s best to implement a few best practices to ensure you get the most out of your Xero-Excel integration. We recommend the following:

• Use your automated Excel sheet as your master template. If a stakeholder wants to see the numbers, they should access the shared dashboard that is linked to the live feed, rather than being sent a static copy. This ensures everyone is looking at the same real-time data.
• If you use Xero Tracking Categories, make sure your automation pulls these. Build ‘Slicer’ filters into your Excel reporting, so you can toggle between the different categories for intuitive data interpretation.
• Take advantage of SyncHub’s security. We connect Xero to Excel safely, allowing you to manage who has access to which data without needing to give everyone full “Standard User” access to your Xero account.

With this implementation, your role can shift from data management to strategic advising. High-level guidance is the goal of any CFO, but if you’re stuck in the weeds of CSV exports, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.

Automate your Xero reporting, connect Xero to Excel, and benefit from the security of that Xero-Excel integration by implementing some clear best practices with your team. You’ll notice an overnight change in the level of your data transparency and strategic overlook.