Xero is your books. The PDFs around it — bills to pay, receipts to reconcile, statements to import — flow in and out daily. Clean PDFs make Xero faster and your accountant happier.
Here's the pre- and post-Xero workflow.
Bills: compress before attaching
Suppliers send bills as PDFs, often oversized with embedded headers. Before attaching to a Xero bill, compress. Saves on Xero's attachment storage and makes the bill faster to preview.
Naming: `YYYY-MM-DD_<supplier>_<amount>.pdf`. Match Xero's bill reference for easy cross-referencing.
Receipts: merge monthly packs
Rather than attaching dozens of individual receipts, merge monthly into `2025-08_Receipts.pdf`. Attach the pack to a single monthly journal entry, or split as needed.
For expense claims, the merged pack is what the approver wants to see — one document, all evidence.
Statements: clean for reconciliation
Bank statement PDFs go to Xero for reconciliation. Some institutions provide CSVs too — use both. Keep the PDF as the audit-trail copy; let the CSV drive auto-reconciliation.
Compress before attaching. Xero handles large files but smaller ones are faster to fetch and preview.
Reports: redact before sharing
Xero exports reports as PDFs. For external sharing (accountant, lender, investor), redact anything that shouldn't be exposed, compress, and password-protect if needed.
For the accountant's annual review, merge all the relevant reports into a single PDF. One file is easier to review than ten.
FAQ
Does Xero have file size limits?
Generally yes — typically 10 MB per attachment, with overall storage limits per organisation. Compress to stay under.
Should I attach a PDF to every transaction?
For anything over a small threshold, yes. For micro-transactions, monthly packs are easier to manage.
How does Xero's Hubdoc fit?
Hubdoc captures and pre-processes. Output PDFs benefit from the same Flint treatment before final attachment for tidy archival.
What about VAT-relevant receipts?
Keep both the original PDF (for audit) and the data captured in Xero (for ledger). They serve different purposes; both need to be reliable.
Xero plus clean PDFs equals tidy books. Process this week's PDFs in Flint before they hit Xero.