How to automatically detect accruals and prepayments from Xero

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I had a client say to me recently  'There seems to be lots of software which deals with prepayments but not really any for accruals. I'm sure someone will come up with something really clever soon. ' It's us! We came up with something really clever, and it handles both.

Let's take a quick look at how it works.

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1. Bills are entered into Xero with the relevant dates the bill relates to in square brackets in the description column, for example Rates for [Jan to Dec] See the table below for examples of the date formats you can use.

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• If there are no dates in square brackets the bills get synced to EasyAccrue and the user can either edit them or delete if no accruals or prepayments are required.
• If you have existing bills in Xero, you need to edit the description in Xero to include the relevant period in square brackets.
• EasyAccrue picks up months not the full date so for example you should put [Jan to Dec 26] which will spread over 12 months, not [15th Jan 26 to 14th Jan 26] which will spread over 13 months from Jan 26 to Jan 27
• EasyAccrue checks the current month for possible prepayments and future months for possible accruals

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2. The sync bills button in EasyAccrue brings in all bills under user specified codes which may be relevant for accruals and prepayments

3. Users make any required changes and approve the bills to automatically create accruals and prepayments

4. Users click post to Xero in the period they are working on

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How EasyAccrue decides what to do with each bill

When EasyAccrue reads the dates in your bill descriptions, it compares the bill date to the recognition period to work out whether an accrual, prepayment, or no adjustment is needed. The table below shows the six most common scenarios. For these examples, assume you are working in the January 2026 period.

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Here are the answers to the questions we've been asked most frequently

1. Why use square brackets?

We've tested lots of options but found that using square brackets is so much more accurate than putting in dates and allowing the system to guess the correct dates. If you don't use them, bills are still synced but you need to input the dates in EasyAccrue

2. Which bills are brought into EasyAccrue?

Any bills which are posted to user specified nominal codes or directly into prepayment codes are brought in unless the dates included in the description show accruals and prepayments are not necessary.

So for example, say you're working in January and there's a bill relating to January, that won't be brought in to EasyAccrue because it's being posted in the month it relates to.

If you have a bill which relates to a future period, that will be brought into EasyAccrue as a draft prepayment. Likewise if you have a bill dated February, relating to January, that will be brought in as a draft accrual in January.

3. What if I post prepaid invoices directly to prepayments ?

Any bills posted directly to prepayments will be synced into EasyAccrue. The user will need to indicate the nominal code to post the prepayment to.

4. Is there a link to the Xero bill from EasyAccrue?

You can find the link to the original Xero bill in the bills screen by clicking on the supplier name in the bill column.

You will also see a link to the Xero invoice when you view the adjustment by clicking on Xero Invoice

5. What about accruals I don't yet have a bill for?

Non invoice accruals can be input into EasyAccrue in the normal way ie. individually or uploaded as a csv file in bulk

6. How do I reconcile my accruals and prepayment accounts in Xero with EasyAccrue?

We have a user configurable monthly report showing the current list of accruals and prepayments.

We also have a reconciliation report which shows the opening balance and detailed movement items for each individual accrual and prepayments. This makes reconciling EasyAccrue and Xero very simple.

7. What if I use Hubdoc or Dext or other software which doesn't allow me to include the dates in square brackets?

There are two solutions to this really depending on volume. You can either edit the description in draft bills individually or export them as a csv, edit and re-import.

The good news is this feature is available right now at no extra cost to existing EasyAccrue users. New users can also sign up to EasyAccrue for free to try it out and we have a completely free version for smaller users.

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