Streamlining Finances: How Xero Integration with Summit Improves Accuracy and Saves Time

As businesses scale, managing expenses manually can become an overwhelming task. This is especially true for growing startups and fast-moving finance teams where expense submissions are frequent and financial data needs to be accurate and up-to-date. That’s where accounting software like Xero comes in. Acting as a single source of financial truth, Xero helps businesses manage core accounting tasks like invoicing, payroll, and reconciliations.

But what happens when your team’s expense volume grows beyond spreadsheets? That’s where Summit, an expense management platform, steps in—and integrating it with Xero makes the entire process even more powerful.

Why Businesses Use Xero for Accounting

Xero has quickly become the go-to accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), and for good reason. With its intuitive interface, cloud-based access, and powerful features, Xero simplifies the traditionally complex world of accounting. Business owners and finance teams use Xero to track transactions, manage payroll, reconcile bank accounts, and generate financial reports—all in one place.

One of Xero’s strongest selling points is its flexibility and scalability. It works well for startups managing basic bookkeeping and grows with businesses that eventually need multi-currency support, expense tracking, and integrations with other tools. This makes it a popular choice for companies that want an efficient, always-accessible financial system that doesn’t require extensive onboarding or technical know-how.

But while Xero handles core accounting brilliantly, it doesn’t cover every part of a modern finance operation—particularly when it comes to managing company expenses, reimbursements, and vendor payments.

The Limits of Using Xero Alone

As businesses scale, finance operations become more complex—and that’s where the cracks start to show. Xero alone doesn’t solve every pain point, especially when it comes to:

• Manual data entry: Expenses still need to be entered into Xero manually, often from spreadsheets or emails. This is time-consuming and prone to human error.
• Delayed reconciliation: Without integration, finance teams wait until month-end to reconcile accounts. This leads to bottlenecks and rushed close cycles.
• Lack of visibility: Xero shows what’s already happened—but doesn’t always give teams visibility into real-time spend or upcoming liabilities.

For fast-moving companies with distributed teams or frequent vendor payments, relying solely on Xero starts to slow things down. That’s where integrating a spend management system like Summit comes in.

How Xero Integration Enhances Spend Management

Summit was built to work alongside your accounting stack, not replace it. Its native Xero integration bridges the gap between day-to-day expense management and your company’s core accounting platform. Here’s how it works—and why it matters.

Seamless Setup

Getting started is fast. With just a few clicks, Summit connects directly to Xero. During setup, you can import your existing chart of accounts, tax codes, and tracking categories—no need to rebuild anything from scratch. This ensures consistency between systems from day one.

Two-Way Sync for Accuracy

Summit’s Xero integration supports two-way syncing. That means:

1. Categories and tax codes from Xero flow into Summit, so employees select the correct options when submitting expenses.
2. Once expenses are approved in Summit, they can be pushed to Xero with a single click—no retyping required.
3. Paid statuses in Xero update automatically in Summit, notifying employees when their reimbursements are processed.

This level of synchronisation eliminates manual duplication and ensures data is always aligned between systems.

Control and Visibility for Finance Teams

One common concern with automation is losing control. Summit’s integration addresses that by giving finance teams full oversight of the syncing process:

1. Pending Review: New transactions appear in a queue, giving finance teams time to verify before syncing.
2. Pending Sync: These are transactions marked for syncing but waiting on final checks or fixes.
3. Completed: All successfully synced records are tracked, so teams can monitor status and resolve any issues easily.

This layered approach gives teams both automation and control—ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.

Automation That Reduces Manual Work

Before integration, many teams spent hours each week copying expense details from paper or spreadsheets into Xero. With Summit, all approved transactions are centralised and ready to sync. This saves hours per month and significantly reduces the risk of errors.

Even better, syncing can be spread out throughout the month—not left for crunch time at month-end. This evens out workloads and leads to a smoother close.

Use Cases: Finance Teams That Got More Out of Xero

Let’s walk through a hypothetical example to see how integration makes a difference.

Scenario: A Growing E-commerce Business

This company runs an online store with a distributed team of 25 employees. They use Xero for accounting and Summit for expense management and invoice processing. Before integration, the finance manager spent up to 10 hours a week reconciling employee reimbursements and vendor payments.

After integrating Xero with Summit:

• Employees began submitting expenses directly into Summit, tagging the correct GL categories and tax rates—imported from Xero—without any back-and-forth.
• Reimbursement statuses were updated in real-time. Once the finance team paid out claims via Xero, Summit automatically notified employees their claims were processed.
• Vendor invoices were routed through Summit for approval and payment. Once paid, the transactions were pushed to Xero with the correct bill details.

Come month-end, reconciliation was nearly complete. What used to take 10+ hours was reduced to 2-3 hours of final checks.

The result? A happier finance team, fewer errors, and better control over company spending.

A Seamless AP Experience with Xero + Summit

Xero is a powerful tool for managing business finances—but it doesn’t do everything. By integrating Summit, companies can streamline their expense processes, reduce reconciliation time, and gain better visibility into spend—all while keeping Xero as their central source of financial truth.

Summit is designed to make expense management feel effortless—especially when integrated with your existing accounting stack. Here’s how it enhances your Xero experience:

• Auto-sync expenses: Push approved employee expenses, vendor bills, and reimbursements directly to Xero—accurately categorised and ready for reconciliatson.
• Automate reconciliation: With two-way syncing, Summit pulls paid statuses from Xero, automatically updating claims and closing the loop for finance teams.
• Maintain real-time visibility: Summit acts as your pre-accounting layer, showing you what’s been spent, what’s pending, and what’s coming—before it hits Xero.
• Empower teams without losing control: Employees can submit expenses confidently using Xero’s categories, while finance retains control over what gets synced.

For companies already using Xero, integrating Summit is the natural next step. It gives your finance team the automation they need—without sacrificing the oversight they want.

If your finance team is spending too much time on manual data entry, chasing receipts, or reconciling spreadsheets, it might be time to connect the dots. With Summit + Xero, spend management becomes seamless, scalable, and stress-free. Talk to us for more information on how to get started