Xero Release Notes

Analytics

• Use Budgets (Early access) to make budgets from actuals, apply adjustments with history log, apply tracking category filters, and create profit and loss budgets.

Bills

• When you save a bill for a new supplier, you can now save the bill details as the purchase default settings for that supplier.

Xero Inventory (Products & services)

• Track backordered items more easily with the new Open Backorders and Backorder History reports. See which invoices and customers are affected by backorders, how much of each order is still outstanding, and when backorders were fulfilled.

Xero Tax

• You can now select the valid ISO 3166-2 Alpha-2 country code in the tax jurisdiction field. This is available for the IR3, IR1216, IR6B and IR3NR forms.

Automatic bank reconciliation

• If your organisation is on the Xero Ignite plan, you can now add auto bank reconciliation to your subscription via the AI Automate add-on, for a fixed monthly price (Xero website).

Payroll

• The new timesheets experience is available for payroll admins. Filter timesheets by status, view employees' draft timesheets and autofill timesheets with data from employees' previous timesheets.

Purchase orders

• If a purchase order is partially billed and you don’t expect to receive the remaining items, close the purchase order short.

Reports

• You can now set a group heading in a financial report template to use a report field. The heading updates automatically whenever the field's value changes. This works for both practice and client report fields, and you can still switch back to entering text manually.

User roles and permissions

• You can now give users the upload only permission for files in Xero to let them upload documents and view their own files.

Analytics:

• You can add individual AI commentary widgets to existing dashboards in Analytics.
• We've added AI-powered explanations to Benchmarks with Analytics. You can now get instant insights about your data and how it compares to your industry.

Bills, invoices, quotes, credit notes and purchase orders:

• You can now drag to fill line item details and use keyboard navigation in bills, invoices, quotes, credit notes and purchase orders, helping you enter repeated information faster.

Connected apps:

• Connect your Xero organisation to the Xero agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, then ask Copilot questions to get financial insights about your business.

Expenses:

• You can now click an expense claim to quickly see all the key details and approve or decline it without leaving the Expenses list.

Homepage:

• We’ve added new size options to the Invoices owed to you, Bills to pay, Net profit or loss and Tasks widgets, so you can adjust how much detail you see. You can also choose to hide or show the graph for the small sized Invoices owed to you and Bills to pay widgets.

Invoices:

• You can now schedule an individual invoice to be sent during the next business day or select a specific date and time.

Reports:

• You can now see the balances of your general ledger accounts over a specific period with the Trial Balance by Date Range report.
• You can now sync financial schedules in Xero report templates so that report notes match the source reports.

User roles and permissions:

• We've updated user roles and permissions to give you more control over what users can see and do in Xero.

Xero Inventory (Products & services):

• If you sell tracked inventory before you have stock on hand, you can now record a backorder for the items.

Automatic bank reconciliation

• When reviewing transactions, you can now view, add or delete files, and change the account code or tax rate for a transaction in the Reconciled transactions screen.

Bank reconciliation

• You can now search by reference and payment reference on the Account Transactions tab of a bank account.

Homepage

• We’ve added three new time periods to the net profit or loss widget. You can customise the time period to show this month, this quarter and this financial year.

Xero Accounting app

• You can now upload multiple files using the Xero Accounting app for iOS and Android.

Analytics

• We added educational tours, tutorials and resources in Analytics.
• You can apply custom colour palettes to graphs in dashboards and visualisation, so your reporting can better match your brand.
• Dashboard widgets can now have custom date ranges and be renamed.
• You can now compare industry benchmarks in dashboards and visualisations.
• The AI insights in Analytics now show plain language explanations of metrics in dashboard widgets and how they’re calculated.

Connected apps

• Connect your Xero organisation to Claude using the Xero connector, then ask Claude questions to get financial insights about your business.

Invoices

• You can now turn off surcharging in an individual invoice.

Purchase orders

• You can now send a file as an attachment on purchase order emails.

Analytics

• We released benchmarks, which lets you compare business performance against similar businesses in your industry.
• We've added prior period comparison for income versus expenses in visualisations.
• You can now schedule visualisation, dashboard and business health scorecards reports to be automatically sent out.

Practice Manager

• All of the 2026 income tax forms are now available for preparation and electronic filing using gateway services (GWS).

• We’ve updated the 2026 forms in the following areas:

  All returns

  • Show IRD number in history record when a tax return is filed
  • Improvements on how tax return front cover address is populated

  IR3

  • Removed transitional tax rates
  • Added 2026 tax rates
  • Added a warning when there’s data imported from another return
  • Removed IETC part year calculation
  • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
  • Included subsequent renumbering
  • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)

  IR3N

  • Removed transitional tax rates
  • Added 2026 tax rates
  • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
  • Included subsequent renumbering
  • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)
  • Added Excess imputation credits brought forward field, prepopulated with IR data if available
  • Resolved ‘Error 2053 – PIE tax deducted cannot be greater than tax on taxable income’
  • Resolved issue with IRD transmission report showing incorrect return type

  IR4

  • Removed transitional tax rates
  • Added 2026 tax rates
  • Added a warning when there’s data imported from another return
  • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
  • Included subsequent renumbering
  • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)

  IR526

  • Resolved an issue where filing the return causes an error if the amount to transfer field is 0.00 or less

  IR6

  • Removed transitional tax rates
  • Added 2026 tax rates
  • Added a warning when there’s data imported from another return
  • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
  • Included subsequent renumbering
  • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)
  • Added tip in Box 21C ‘Minor and corporate beneficiary income’
  • Added tip in Box 27T ‘Total tax payable for all beneficiaries (excludes beneficiaries taxed as trustee income)’

  IR8

  • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
  • Included subsequent renumbering
  • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)
  • Corrected spelling mistake in client worksheet report

  IR833

  • Added feature to create as a standalone form for years earlier than 2021

  IR9

  • Removed transitional tax rates
  • Added 2026 tax rates
  • Residential rental income – Removed Interest limitation deductibility fields
  • Included subsequent renumbering
  • Added new transfer types for FamilyBoost (FMB) and Fees Free (FFR)

  IR10

  • Added Box 60 ‘Total value of Investment Boost asset(s) being claimed’ where you can enter the total value of assets you claimed Investment Boost for in the tax year
  • Values are updated from Fixed Assets if ‘Update from Xero’ is selected

• Removed PTS return type from Clients dropdown list of return types

• New Business Industry codes added for 2026

• From 1 April 2026, valid IRD number range expanded from 150-000-000 to 200-000-000

• Changed Xero default email address for tax payment letters to reduce chances of emails going to spam

Rates and threshold changes

• ACC rate increases from $1.60 to $1.67
• ACC maximum income increases from $142,283 to $152,790
• ACC maximum payable increases from $2,276.52 to $2.2551.59
• Student loan threshold unchanged at $24,128
• Student loan adjusted net income threshold unchanged at $500
• Student loan repayment rate unchanged at 12%
• Minimum family tax credit (MFTC) threshold
  • Prescribed amount unchanged and remains $35,316
  • Annual before tax equivalent unchanged and remains $41,483
  • Abatement rate unchanged at 27%
• Family tax rate (FTC) changes
  • First child rate is unchanged and remains $7,524
  • Subsequent children unchanged and remains $6,130
• Best Start tax credit unchanged and remains $3,838 or $73 per week
  • No abatement threshold for 0–1 year old children
  • Children 1 year and above, after $79,000 abatement rate unchanged at 21%
• In-work tax credit (IWTC)
  • For first three children, rate is unchanged and remains $5,070
  • Each additional child over 3, rate is unchanged and remains $780

Xero Accounting app

• We refreshed the navigation in the Xero Accounting app for iOS and Android.

Xero Tax

• We've included the option to update from Fixed Assets for Box 60 - Total value of Investment Boost asset(s) being claimed.

Bank reconciliation

• In find and recode, if a lock date is set for all users, you can now include the transactions in the locked period in the search results.
• You can now select unpaid credit notes in match or find and match in the Reconcile tab – you don’t have to apply a cash refund first.

Expenses

• You can now turn expense email notifications on or off.

Invoices

• It's now possible to request an online deposit from your customers, either as a percentage of the total invoice or a fixed amount.
• You can now record payments directly from within an invoice.
• You can now turn on scheduled payments to allow your customers to select a payment date on or before the invoice due date. When a payment is scheduled, Xero automatically processes it on the chosen date, helping improve on time payment behavior and cash flow predictability.
• Your customers can now pay multiple invoices from a statement with one payment using any available Stripe payment method. They can choose to pay specific invoices, only those overdue or all unpaid invoices.

Analytics

• We renamed "Analytics powered by Syft" to "Analytics". The functionality and insights into your businesses' financial information remain the same.

Payroll

• You can now bulk upload your employees’ past earnings with a file from your previous payroll system or a template provided in Xero.

Purchase orders

• We’ve improved the purchase order description page with a new layout and options to customise columns.
• You can now Approve & email, or Approve & print PDF from the purchase order approval menu.
• You can now see quantity on hand for items on the description page.

Analytics

• We released artificial intelligence to template widgets on the performance dashboard. AI insights help you analyse the financial information of your business to identify areas for improvement.

Practice Manager

• You can now import losses directly from the IRD into the returns. These include losses brought forward, excess imputation credits, imputation account opening balances and excess residential rental deductions (when there’s only one property and no schedules are being used).

Analytics powered by Syft:

• We released business health scorecards. This lets you assess the overall health of your business against key goals and metrics.

Bank reconciliation:

• Automatic bank reconciliation is now available for selected organisations. We're rolling it out to all users gradually as part of an open beta over the coming months.

Files:

• The file library is now split into an inbox and archive to help you organise your files. We’ve also introduced a side-by-side file preview.

Analytics powered by Syft

• We released Analytics powered by Syft. You can use graphs and dashboards to visualise your organisation’s key financial information. You can also see a detailed overview of your cash position and project your cash flow up to 180 days.

Purchase orders

• We’ve improved the purchase order list with a new layout and options to edit and rearrange fields according to your needs.
• We’ve added the ability to turn on compact view so you can view more information on one screen.

Bills

• We’ve made it easier to find and select the automated ways to enter bills in Xero to help save time, improve accuracy and reduce manual work.

Connected apps

• You can now connect Xero to your Etsy account to automatically sync your daily Etsy sales and easily reconcile your deposits.

Fixed assets

• You can now apply the Investment Boost tax deduction to eligible assets purchased from 22 May.

Reports

• We've changed the layout editor of reports to allow formula rows to show as percentages.
• We've added the ability to add custom reports to an adviser pack in Xero. Accountants can now prepare report templates using reports already available in the organisation.

Xero Accounting app

• Add bills in the Xero Accounting app quickly and easily by capturing photos or selecting files from your mobile device. Xero creates a draft bill with key details entered and the source document attached.