With Xero (and with a lot of other cloud accounting software providers) you can use Live Bank Feeds.

What are bank feeds? It just means that the debits and credits (money coming in and coming out in your bank account) that you can see everyday on your internet banking which then gets sent to (“feed”) into Xero. So when you go into Xero, you can see all the transactions that are in your bank account. You can get feeds in Xero for bank accounts, paypal account and even credit card accounts!

Why are bank feeds awesome? Two reasons:

1. Back the olden days, at worst, people would have to key their data into their accounting software or better, the would go into internet banking, export a QIF or whatever wierdly named file and then go back into their accounting software and then import that file. With bank feeds you don’t need to do this. You just set it up once, and then it should come automatically.

2. In your Xero dashboard, you’ll get more relevant information about your business and how much cash you have in the kitty. In the past, you’d have to wait until the end of an accounting period e.g. at the end of the month before you could see how much cash you had on hand in your accounting reports.

Get Bank Feeds on Xero

Here’s how you do it for Bank Accounts. For Credit Card Accounts just follow only steps 1, 5 & 6!

1. Go to Accounts > Bank Accounts.
2. Select the bank account or credit card account (click on the account name) where you wish to have bank feeds. Make sure that you’re able to get bank feeds into Xero with the bank that you’re with. Here’s a list of banks that do bank feeds with Xero.
3. Click “Get Bank Feeds”. You may or may not see this based on your user level. You may be asked to do some papers work from your bank to make this happen. If it’s automatic follow the next steps:
4. Enter your bank login details and read the terms and if you’re happy click “Confirm” and then “Next”.
5. Click “Start Bank Feed Now”
6. Choose the matching bank feed from the dropdown box. You can import 90 days of transactions or go far back as you can. Now you’re done.

Here’s how you do it for Paypal Accounts.

1. Go to Accounts > Bank Accounts.
2. Click “+ Add Bank Account” and choose “Paypal”
3. Enter your details and check “Set up automatic Paypal import box” and put in your email address and the import start date.
4. Save it - an email from Xero will arrive in to your inbox for your Paypal email address.
5. Follow the details in the email you receive to verify your email address.
6. Now you’ll need to go to Paypal to enable the automatic feeds. So log in and go to “My Selling Tools”
7. Click “Update” next to “APU access”
8. Select “Grant API permission” or “Add or edit API permissions”
9. In the Third Party Permission Username area, put in: paypal_api1.xero.com
10. Check the following two boxes (1) “Obtain information about a single transaction” (2) Search your transactions for items that match specific criteria and display the results, under the “Available Permissions” box. Click Add.
11. Then you’re done!