Xero is where a business keeps its books, and where most bookkeepers and accountants we talk to do their clients' work. At Toby we build for that file. Toby reads it, checks it and works out the figures that depend on it. The fixes, the lodgement and the books themselves stay with you, in Xero.
What stays in Xero?
Everything you do today. Coding transactions, reconciling the bank, raising invoices, running pay and keeping the ledger all stay in Xero. Toby writes nothing back to the file, so a change only happens when you make it there. Toby prepares the work and you lodge it through your usual channel.
What does Toby add to a Xero file?
A second set of eyes on the file, and the working behind the figures you lodge:
- Health Check (free). Eight checks on the file, each one a thing we have watched go wrong: a tax amount recorded with no tax code, a tax code set with no tax amount, an account in a tax-bearing class with no default tax code, a contact whose ABN fails the ATO check digit, one ABN shared by contacts with different names, two contacts whose names differ by a character or two, a bank line still unreconciled past your threshold, and a transaction whose own description says drawings or personal while it sits in an expense account. It leads with what to fix first.
- BAS. Prepares and checks this quarter's BAS from the bank transactions, invoices, bills, credit notes, manual journals and tax rates in the file, on a cash or accruals basis. It lists every source it read and every source it did not.
- Payroll. Reads Xero Payroll to check super, and with Plus checks pay against the FairWork award you classify each employee to.
- Ask. Answers Australian tax, super and payroll questions with the figure first, then its working and source, and can fill in a tool from your question for you to run.
Every figure is worked out in Python from the published rates, never written by a model, and every result shows its working and links the page it came from, so you can check it the same way you would check a colleague's.
How does that reduce the risk of getting it wrong?
Take a GST-free sale coded with no tax rate. In Xero it looks like any other line. In a BAS prepared by hand it quietly drops out of G1. Toby refuses that line rather than deciding which label it belongs to, names it in the result, and says the BAS is incomplete until you fix it in Xero. The same goes for a source it could not read: if your app connection does not carry the scope for manual journals, the BAS says manual journals were not read, instead of presenting a total as though they were.
Two duplicate supplier contacts behave the same way. They pass unnoticed in the ledger, then split one supplier's payments across two names and put the TPAR total under the threshold. The Health Check names both contacts and the ABN they share, and leaves the merge to you.
And the decisions that are a person's to make stay a person's. Whether a worker is an employee or a contractor, which award an employee sits under: Toby asks, records who answered and when, then calculates from that answer. It never fills one in to get a result on the screen.
You then fix the cause in Xero, run the check again, and keep the working with the client file.
What does it mean for a business doing its own books?
You keep working in Xero, and before each BAS or pay cycle you get a check that tells you, in plain words, what looks wrong and why. The figures come with the working, so a question from your accountant has an answer you can show them.
What does it mean for bookkeeping and accounting teams?
The same eight checks run the same way on every client file, so a junior's review and a partner's review find the same things. Each run is saved in History with its inputs, its working and its sources, and exports to Excel or Word, which is the file you send the client when they ask why the BAS moved. The review that a spreadsheet used to hold, with nobody quite sure which tab was current, now sits against the client file with a date and a name on it.
How does the connection work?
You authorise the connection in Xero, and it is read-only. The token is held encrypted, and the servers, database and logs run in the AWS Sydney region. You can revoke the connection in Xero at any time, and it stops that moment. Our security page sets out what is kept from AI and how data is held.
Where to start
Run the free Health Check on one file, see what it finds, then fix those items in Xero. If you want the BAS and payroll checks as well, start a Core trial and run them on the same file.
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Related reading
Before you connect any app to a client's file, see questions to ask before you connect your Xero file to any app, and for what each tool does, see features.