How to Import Supplier Bills in Xero

Welcome to the Fit Small Business Xero training course! In this lesson, we’re going to cover how to import supplier bills in Xero.

You can follow along on your own Xero account. If you don’t have one already, click here to sign up for a free 30-day trial and follow along below.

To complete this lesson, you can either watch the video below, read through the step-by-step instructions, or do both. Let’s begin!

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Why It Is Important to Import Supplier Bills

When you purchase big ticket items, such as office furniture or computers, you may receive your purchases first, and then pay sometime in the future depending on the credit terms you have established with your supplier.

If you are converting from another accounting software to Xero, then you will most likely have unpaid bills that need to be entered into Xero. It is very important for you to create these open bills in Xero for a couple of reasons:

To have an accurate record of the money that you owe to your suppliers (known as accounts payable)
To have a bill to apply your payment to when it is time to make a payment.

It is much easier to import bills into Xero as opposed to manually entering them one by one. In this lesson, we will walk through each step of how to import your bills into Xero.

How Do I Import Supplier Bills

Follow the steps below to import supplier bills into Xero.

Step 1 – Navigate to Purchases

From the Accounts menu, select Purchases as indicated in the screenshot below.

Step 2 – Navigate to Import Template

Select the “Import” button as indicated in the screenshot below.

Step 3 – Prepare the Import Template

Download and save the bills template to your computer. Below we have provided a chart that includes each column in the template along with a brief description and an example of what to include.

At a minimum, you must provide information for the required fields that are indicated below with an (*). Try to provide as much information as possible to avoid having to complete it later on.

Column Heading	Description	Example
*Contact Name	Enter the name of the supplier as it appears on the bill. Note: This is a required field.	Bluehost
Email Address	Enter the email address of your contact person for this supplier.	info@bluehost.com
PO Address Line 1 PO Address Line 2 PO Address Line 3 PO Address Line 4 PO City PO Region PO Postal Code PO Zip Code PO Country	Enter the remit to address where your supplier would like you to send payments via check and other correspondence. Note: If the supplier has already been set up in Xero then you can leave these fields blank.	4321 Mockingjay Lane Suite D Mockingbird CA 90037
*Invoice Number	Enter the invoice number that appears on your bill. If there is no invoice number, you should create your own for reference later. Note: This is a required field.	For example, Acme uses the month and the year to create an invoice number for Bluehost, as follows: April2017Billing
*Invoice Date	Enter the bill date that appears on your bill using the following format: mm/dd/yyyy Note: This is a required field.	04/04/2017
*Due Date	Enter the date that the bill is due, using the following format:mm/dd/yyyy Note: This is a required field.	05/04/2017
Inventory Item Code	If you have purchased an item for resale to customers, enter the item code exactly as it appears in Xero. If you have not set up the item code, then you should do that first before importing supplier bills. Note: If you purchased more than one item you need to enter each item on a separate line and complete all of the required fields.	Enter the item code for products purchased for resale to customers, if applicable.
Description	Enter the details of each item purchased as it appears on the bill.	Monthly web hosting fee
Quantity	If applicable, enter the quantity of each product purchased. Note: For services, this could represent the number of hours.	5
*Unit Amount	Enter the per unit cost of each product or service that you purchased. Note: This is a required field. For services, this could be the hourly rate paid or a flat amount. Do not enter the dollar sign “$”.	100
*Account Code	Refer to the chart of accounts for the account code that this purchase should be coded to. Note: This is a required field.	For example, if Acme codes all hosting fees to Hosting Fees - 6050 In this column you just want to enter thenumericpart of the account “6050”.
*Tax Type
Tracking Name1 Tracking Option 1 Tracking Name 2 Tracking Option 2	Complete these fields only if you have set up tracking categories in Xero. To learn how tracking categories work, refer to our course on reporting in Xero.	If applicable, enter the appropriate tracking code in this field.
Currency	If you track bills in multiple currencies, enter the 3 letter code for the foreign currency the bill is in; if it is not your native currency. Note: You must set up multiple currencies first before you can import supplier bills.	For example, Acme received a bill from a supplier located in New Zealand. They would enter the 3 letter code for the New Zealand Dollar which is “NZD”.

Tips for Importing Supplier Bills

Tip #1 – Do not combine customer invoices and bills on the same template. Customer invoices must be imported separately using the invoice template.
Tip #2 – Do not make any changes (or rearrange) the header row.
Tip #3 – While you can delete any columns that you do not have info to import, I recommend that you leave them.
Tip #4 – If you have already set up supplier contacts in Xero, be sure to enter the name of the supplier exactly as it appears in Xero in the supplier contacts field; otherwise, Xero will assume it is brand new and will set it up again.
Tip #5 – If you have already set up supplier contacts in Xero, there is no need to complete the PO Address fields unless you would like to make changes. Any info entered in the template will override the contact details that you currently have set up in Xero.
Tip #6 – For Bills with more than one line item, each line item must include the same invoice number and currency (for multi-currency). This will allow Xero to ensure each line item shows up on the bill along with the correct totals.

Step 4 – Navigate to Import Screen

Return to the Import screen by selecting Accounts and Purchases as indicated in the screenshot below.

Click the “Import” button as indicated in the screenshot below.

Step 5 – Select the File you want to Import

Click the “Browse” button to locate the file that you want to import. Once selected, you should see the filename appear to the right of the “Browse” button as indicated in the screenshot below.

Import Supplier Bills into Xero

Before moving forward with the import, there are a couple of questions that you need to answer to assist Xero in handling contact address details and sales tax:

Would you like to update contact address details? – As discussed,if you have already set up the supplier contact in Xero, then there is no need to include address details in this template unless you want to update the information that was previously entered during setup.
Is the Unit Amount Field tax inclusive or exclusive? – If you included tax in the Unit Amount column of the template, then select Tax inclusive; if you did not include tax in this column then select exclusive. In our sales tax lesson, we discussed how to track, pay and report sales tax.
Import – Once you have indicated your response to the two questions, click the “Import” button as indicated in the screenshot above.

Step 6 – Confirm Bills to Import

In the next screen, you will have a chance to review and confirm the bills that will be imported. If for some reason you find an error, click the “Go Back” button to stop the import.

Final Review of Bills before they are imported into Xero.

Total Bills that will be imported – In this section, Xero provides you with the total number of bills that will import. Make sure this agrees with the total number of bills in your spreadsheet. If it does not, you will see a notification in this section of errors for the bills that will not import along with an explanation of what the issue is.
Note: All bills will import in a draft status. This simply means that the bills will have to be approved after they have been imported. You can give certain users permission to approve bills. We will discuss this in more detail in the lesson on how to invite users.
Complete Import – If you are ready to proceed with the import, select the “Complete Import” button as indicated in the screenshot above.

Step 7 – Review Imported Bills

If the import was a success, you will see the bills that were imported listed in the Draft tab. At this point, you can review, edit or approve them.

Review Bills that have successfully imported into Xero.

Wrap Up

That wraps up the section on how to import supplier bills. The next lesson in our Xero Training Course will be how to set up account balances. In this lesson, we will walk you through how to bring over your existing account balances from another accounting software into Xero. To access this lesson or any of the others in the series, click here. For a free 30-day trial of Xero, click the button below.

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