How to Email Invoices to Xero (2026)

Get supplier bills into Xero without typing them - the built-in way, and the fully automatic one.

Xero gives every organisation a unique bills email address. Forward a supplier's PDF, JPG, or PNG to it and Xero creates a draft bill with the file attached and the key fields filled in. It's the quickest built-in way to get invoices into Xero - but it only accepts attachments (not invoices in the email body), only works for email, and you still forward each one by hand. To get every invoice into Xero automatically - including in-body receipts and ones behind vendor portals - connect a capture tool.

Tailride pulls invoices from your inbox, portals, and messengers and pushes them straight into Xero as fully coded bills.

Nobody starts a business to key supplier bills into Xero one field at a time. The good news is you don't have to: Xero can turn an emailed invoice into a draft bill on its own, and with the right setup you can stop touching them entirely. Here's how the built-in feature works, where it stops, and how to cover the rest.

Three ways to get invoices into Xero

There are really three routes, and most businesses use more than one:

Method	Effort	What it catches
Type bills in by hand	High, every bill	Whatever you sit down to enter
Xero's bills email	Medium - forward each one	Email attachments only
A connected capture tool	One-time setup	Every source, automatically

Manual entry is the baseline nobody misses. Xero's built-in bills email is a big step up for emailed PDFs. And a capture tool that plugs into Xero removes the forwarding step and reaches the invoices email never sees. The rest of this guide covers the built-in route first, then how to automate the whole thing.

The built-in way: Xero's bills email address

Every Xero organisation has a unique email address that turns anything you send it into a draft bill. Here's how to find and use it.

In Xero, go to Business → Bills to pay (or Purchases → Bills).
Click Create bill from email (or New bill), then click Copy next to your unique bills email address.
Send or forward a supplier's bill - as a PDF, JPG, or PNG attachment - to that address.
The bill appears in Bills to pay as a draft, with the original file attached.
Review the details, code it, and approve.

If Xero can read the document, it pre-fills the Contact, Date, Total, Due Date, and Reference for you, so a bill that used to be five minutes of typing becomes a quick check.

A tip worth heeding from Xero: treat that address like a password. Anyone who has it can create bills in your organisation, so don't publish it or share it beyond the people (and tools) that need it.

Tips for cleaner bills in Xero

A few habits make the built-in feature far more reliable:

One invoice per email. Send each bill separately so Xero creates one clean draft, not a jumble.
PDF beats a photo. A digital PDF reads more accurately than a snapshot of a printout, so forward the PDF whenever the supplier sends one.
Shoot scans flat and well-lit. If you must photograph a paper bill, lay it flat, fill the frame, and avoid glare - Xero reads clear documents far better.
Keep the bills address private. It's effectively a key to your Bills list; share it only with the people and tools that need it.
Let recurring suppliers auto-code. For bills you get every month, defining a rule once - in Xero or your capture tool - saves coding them by hand every time.

What Xero's email-in can and can't do

The built-in feature is handy, but it has firm edges - and knowing them is the difference between a tidy Bills list and a pile of invoices that never made it in.

It accepts attachments only. The bill has to be a PDF, JPG, or PNG attached to the email. Invoices pasted into the body of the email - the inline HTML and plain-text receipts that Stripe, Shopify, and PayPal send - are not accepted. Those simply won't create a bill.

It's email, and only email. Plenty of invoices never arrive by email at all. They sit behind a login at Amazon Business, Meta Ads, or Adobe, waiting to be downloaded. Xero's bills email can't reach those.

You're still the one forwarding. Every invoice has to be forwarded, by you, one at a time. That's fine for a light week and unworkable at month-end across dozens of suppliers - and the one you forget is the one your accountant chases.

There's a size limit. Emails are capped at 25MB total, so a batch of scans can bounce.

None of this makes the feature bad - for a straightforward PDF from a regular supplier, it's perfect. It just means email-in handles one slice of your invoices, and leaves the rest to you.

Why your emailed bill didn't appear in Xero

If you forwarded a bill and no draft showed up, it's almost always one of these:

It was in the email body, not attached. Xero only reads attachments. An inline HTML or plain-text receipt won't create a bill - you'd have to save it as a PDF first, or use a tool that reads the body.
The file type isn't supported. Xero takes PDF, JPG, and PNG. Other formats - Word documents, HEIC photos - are ignored.
The email was over 25MB. A batch of large scans can tip over the limit and bounce; send fewer per email.
The fields didn't populate. Xero still creates the draft, but a faint or skewed scan means you'll fill in the Contact, Date, and Total yourself. Clearer documents read better.
You used the wrong address. The bills email is unique per organisation - double-check you copied the current one.

When the same issues keep recurring, it's usually a sign email-in has hit its ceiling for your mix of invoices.

The complete way: get every invoice into Xero automatically

To close those gaps, you connect a tool that captures invoices wherever they live and delivers them into Xero for you. That's what Tailride is built to do, and it's a native Xero integration rather than a forwarding trick.

It captures everything, not just attachments. Tailride reads invoices from your inbox - including the in-body HTML and plain-text receipts Xero's email-in rejects - pulls the ones behind vendor portals like Amazon and Meta Ads with a browser extension, and even takes receipts you photograph and send to its WhatsApp or Telegram bot.
It extracts more than the basics. AI reads the full document - vendor, date, total, tax, and line items - and applies your own rules, so what lands in Xero is fully coded, not a bare draft.
It pushes straight into Xero. Finished bills flow into your Xero organisation with the source document attached - no forwarding, no 25MB limit, no manual step.

Where Xero's bills email captures the invoices that happen to arrive as email attachments, Tailride captures the other three-quarters too, and files them the same way.

Get every invoice into Xero, automatically. Connect Tailride free - your first 10 invoices a month are on us.

How to set it up, step by step

Connect Xero. In Tailride, open Integrations and connect your Xero organisation with a one-time secure sign-in.
Connect your sources. Link your inbox, add your vendor portals, and connect WhatsApp or Telegram if you use them - this is the "capture everything" part.
Set your rules (optional). Tell Tailride how to categorise and tag in plain language ("tag all Uber receipts as Transport"), so bills arrive in Xero already coded.
Review in Xero. Captured invoices land as detailed bills, ready to approve. New ones flow in automatically, and you can sweep your inbox history to clear any backlog.

What you gain by automating it

Moving from forwarding to automatic capture changes several things at once:

No more manual forwarding. Every invoice reaches Xero on its own, from every source.
Nothing missed. The in-body receipts and portal invoices that email-in can't touch stop slipping through - and those are usually the ones that cost you at tax time.
Cleaner bills. Data arrives coded to your rules, with line items and the source document attached, so review is quick.
A calmer month-end. Bills have been landing in Xero all month, so the close is a review rather than a reconstruction.

When to use which

You don't have to pick one forever:

A few PDFs from steady suppliers? Xero's built-in bills email is quick and free - use it.
Invoices scattered across email bodies, portals, and messengers, or any real volume? Connect a capture tool so nothing depends on you remembering to forward it.

Most businesses end up wanting the second, because the invoices that go missing are rarely the tidy PDFs - they're the in-body receipt and the portal login everyone forgets.

What it looks like in practice

Picture a small agency. The hosting invoice arrives as a PDF and forwards itself into Xero; the Stripe receipt sits in the email body, so a capture tool grabs it where Xero's email-in can't; the Meta Ads invoice is behind a login, pulled by the browser extension; and a taxi receipt gets photographed and sent to a chat bot. By the time the bookkeeper opens Xero, all four are waiting as coded draft bills with their documents attached - nothing forwarded by hand, nothing missed. Month-end becomes a review instead of a hunt.

FAQ

Where do I find my Xero bills email address?
In Xero, go to Business → Bills to pay (or Purchases → Bills), click Create bill from email (or New bill), and copy the unique bills email address shown. Keep it private - anyone with it can create bills in your organisation.

What file types can I email to Xero?
PDF, JPG, and PNG attachments, up to a total of 25MB per email. The invoice must be an attachment - invoices pasted into the body of the email are not accepted.

Does Xero read the data from an emailed invoice?
Yes, when the document is legible Xero pre-fills the Contact, Date, Total, Due Date, and Reference on the draft bill. You still review and code it before approving.

Can Xero capture invoices that are in the email body?
No. Xero's bills email only accepts attachments, so inline HTML and plain-text receipts (like many Stripe, Shopify, and PayPal ones) won't create a bill. A capture tool such as Tailride reads the email body too and pushes the result into Xero.

How do I get invoices into Xero from Amazon or other portals?
Those invoices aren't emailed, so Xero's bills email can't reach them. Use a tool with a browser extension that pulls invoices from portals and syncs them into Xero - Tailride does this for Amazon, Meta Ads, and 20+ others.

How do I get all my invoices into Xero automatically instead of forwarding each one?
Connect a capture tool to Xero. It watches your inbox, portals, and messengers, extracts each invoice, and posts it into Xero as a coded bill with the file attached - no manual forwarding.

Why didn't my emailed invoice show up in Xero?
The usual causes are an invoice in the email body rather than attached, an unsupported file type, an email over 25MB, or the wrong bills address. Xero only creates a bill from a PDF, JPG, or PNG attachment sent to your organisation's current unique address.

Can several people on my team email bills to Xero?
Yes - anyone with the organisation's bills email address can forward bills to it, which is why Xero recommends keeping it private. For team-wide capture with per-sender tracking, a tool like Tailride connects each person's inbox and messenger and files everything into Xero from one place.