When you integrate Dext with Xero, you can choose where your costs and sales items are published in Xero. Each destination affects how your transactions are recorded and managed.
Important: To publish items to accounting software, you must either:
Have an Admin role, or
Be granted permission to publish by your account administrator.
Contact your administrator if you need access.
Costs publishing destinations
Items in your Costs workspace are published to Purchases (Bills) in Xero by default.
You can change the destination in Dext to better match how you manage your business expenses.
You can publish to:
Purchases
Classic Expense Claims
Bank Accounts
How to set your default destination
In Dext, go to Connections > Accounting software > Xero > Manage.
Under Default ‘publish to’ destination for costs, select where you’d like costs to be sent in Xero.
You can also define how items appear in Xero using these statuses:
Draft
Awaiting Approval
Awaiting Payment
Paid (where possible)
Option 1: Purchases (for unpaid & paid invoices)
Use this destination for business expenses and bills paid - or due to be paid - from your business bank accounts. Items published here don’t need a linked bank account at the time of publishing.
You can publish:
Single expenses and Expense claims
With statuses: Draft, Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Payment, or Paid (where possible)
Tip: Items set to be published to the Purchases section as Paid (where possible) require a payment method that is linked to a bank account in Xero allocated to them. Without a linked bank account, Dext will automatically publish them as Awaiting Payment.
Option 2: Classic Expense Claims (for employee reimbursements)
Use this for expenses paid personally by employees that require reimbursement.
These items are published as Draft in Xero (due to API limitations).
Only the employee to whom the item belongs can see it initially.
Once submitted for approval in Xero, other users with the right permissions will see it.
Note: The user must be linked to Xero. If not, Dext will show an error:
Tip: If you’re managing reimbursable expenses, use the Expense claims feature in Dext instead of publishing directly to Classic Expense Claims in Xero.
Due to Xero’s API limitations, only the Xero user assigned to those items can initially see them when published to Classic Expense Claims. Using Dext’s Expense claims ensures all authorised users can review and process the claims smoothly within Xero.
Option 3: Bank Accounts (for paid and reconciled items)
Choose this option for expenses that have already been paid via a business bank account. These are published as Spend Money transactions in Xero.
Requirements:
Only use this option when an actual payment has been made - it prevents duplicate transactions.
Recommendation:
Select Bank Accounts for already-paid items to avoid creating duplicate payments.
Note: Publishing to a Bank Account does not create an invoice in Xero. It simply creates a Spend Money transaction, which can be easily removed if needed.
If you want to create an invoice and reconcile it later, choose Purchases → Paid (where possible) instead.
Sales publishing destinations
Items in the Sales workspace are published by default to the Sales section in Xero. You can also publish to Bank Accounts by updating your integration settings.
Go to Connections > Accounting software > Xero > Manage.
Under Default ‘publish to’ destination for sales, choose either:
Sales, or
Bank Accounts
You can also choose the status for sales items:
Draft
Awaiting Approval
Awaiting Payment
Paid (where possible)
Tip: Publishing to Sales is ideal for managing invoices and customer payments, while Bank Accounts works best for immediately reconciled transactions.
Expense claims and additional notes
Expense claims can be sent to Purchases, Classic Expense Claims, or Bank Accounts.
On Simple Xero plans, users can only publish items as Draft and up to five bills in other statuses.
To publish items in multiple currencies, enable multi-currency in Xero and toggle Publish multiple currencies in Dext.
Finding published items in Xero
Once your items are published, you can find them in Xero under:
Destination | Location in Xero | Type |
Purchases | Bills section | Supplier invoices |
Classic Expense Claims | Expense claims | Employee reimbursements |
Bank Accounts | Spend money transactions | Paid items |
Sales | Sales section | Sales invoices |
Can’t find your item?
Use the Dext Archive to locate it. Each published item includes an Open in Xero button, which acts as a deep link - it takes you straight to the corresponding transaction inside Xero. This saves time by skipping manual searches and ensuring you’re viewing the exact record linked to that item.