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Notes from the toolkit

Product news, guides and practice tips for teams running on Xero Practice Manager. For step-by-step instructions, see the user guides.

The four options laid along an axis measuring distance from the client record — Practice Manager's own Documents tab and a layer over your own drive together in the client record, a cloud drive a tab away, and a practice document management system a whole system away — each labelled with what it costs you

Guides

4 August 20269 min read

Document management in Xero Practice Manager: four options

XPM stores documents, but it was never built to be a document management system. Here's what it does, where it stops, and the four ways practices fill the gap.

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Send the link, not the file: on a lavender ground, an open envelope with a PDF called Tax return.pdf sticking out, captioned A copy. Out of your hands, beside a sealed envelope with a blue Open your documents link across it, captioned A link. Still yours

Guides

15 September 202613 min read

How to send documents to clients without email attachments

An email attachment is a copy you can't take back, sent to whoever the address turns out to be. Here is when a link is better, how to share one safely from Google Drive or Microsoft 365, what the email should still say, and where attachments are still the right call.

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Five documents. One file to sign: five white cards labelled Letter, Accounts, Rep letter, Tax return and Summary, fanned on a mint ground with an arrow into a single PDF titled Year-end pack FY2026 that carries a pen signature on its signature line, beside the line Keep the signed copy beside it

Guides

14 September 202613 min read

How to build a year-end pack in Xero Practice Manager

A year-end pack is two records: the pack you send and the pack that comes back signed. Here is what goes in one, what order it goes in, when to merge and when not to, what Xero's own document packs will and won't do, and what to keep once the client has signed.

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Nobody searches for Scan_0034.pdf: a scanner's file name in grey monospace, struck through in amber, above the same file renamed in a search result card — Bank statement - 4521 - 2025-03.pdf, with the words Bank statement highlighted as the match — and the line Name it the moment it arrives

Guides

11 September 202612 min read

How to name client files so anyone can find them

A file's name is the only part of it that goes with it into an email, a zip or somebody's Downloads folder, and in Xero Practice Manager it is also the sort order. Here is a naming convention for client files that sorts, searches and survives leaving its folder — and why it has to be applied the moment a file arrives.

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Client files belong to the practice: on the left, a stack of dashed client folders labelled OneDrive fades out above a single person, tagged 30 days after their account is deleted, by default; on the right, the same stack in solid white, labelled SharePoint library, stands on a building and a plinth, marked stays when anyone leaves

Guides

10 September 202611 min read

SharePoint or OneDrive for Xero Practice Manager client files

Xero Practice Manager has no SharePoint or OneDrive integration, so a Microsoft 365 practice pays for storage it cannot use from XPM. Here is where client files should live — a SharePoint library, not someone's OneDrive — how to set it up, and why Microsoft now asks an admin to approve any app that opens it.

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A signature scribbled on a ruled line, labelled signed, dated and filed — and a question mark over three dashed arrows forking from it towards three candidate terms of business, May 2022, May 2023 and March 2026, with none of them marked as the version that was agreed

Practice tips

2 September 202614 min read

Issued is not agreed: the 2026 engagement letter refresh

ICAEW revised its engagement letter templates in March 2026 — new schedules for MTD and for acting as an ACSP, and Terms of Business that now refer to AI. Updating your letter is the easy half. Proving which version each client agreed to is a filing decision you make at the moment you send.

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Two retention clocks side by side — the money laundering clock stopped at zero, waiting for a client relationship to end, and the regulation 15 clock already running from the day an identity check was refused — with the refused file shown outside every client folder

Practice tips

31 August 202616 min read

Verified is not filed: seven years of Companies House ID evidence

If you verify a director's identity, you must keep the request and every piece of evidence you considered for seven years — including for the people you refused. The rules say what to keep and how long. They never say where, and the hardest file is the one with no client attached to it.

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A signed PDF with a Certificate of Completion page standing on a plinth labelled “Your own Drive”, while three chips — client portal, share links and audit history — lift away from it and dissolve

Practice tips

27 August 202614 min read

The documents are the easy part: what leaving a document system costs

Every vendor will tell you that you can export your data. Almost none of them are asked the more useful question: on the day you cancel, which of the things you rely on stop working, and which do they keep? Here is what two vendors publish, and the six questions to put to any of them before you sign.

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A locked FY26 workpaper pack on one side and an open client file spanning several years on the other, with engagement letters, identity records, constitutions and correspondence placed on the client-file side and bank statements and reconciliations on the pack side

Practice tips

24 August 202614 min read

A pack is not a filing system: the new Xero Workpapers and your documents

The new Xero Workpapers holds the evidence behind one period's numbers, and it is built to be locked when that period is signed off. Your client documents are permanent, cross-year and cross-service. Both statements are true at once, and the practices that get caught out are the ones that only notice the first.

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Four quarterly update deadlines — 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May — with a cumulative bar running underneath showing each update restating the whole year to date, and one unresolved document carried through all four

Practice tips

19 August 202615 min read

Four collections a year, not one: client documents under MTD for Income Tax

Making Tax Digital digitised the summary, not the evidence. A quarterly update carries category totals and nothing else — but the obligation to hold the bank statements and invoices behind them is unchanged, and because updates are cumulative, a gap you don't close in the first quarter follows you into the other three.

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Two calendars compared: one with a single January deadline and 475,722 returns stacked on the final day, beside a tiered calendar spreading the same work across 31 October, 31 January, 28 February, 31 March and 15 May, with the first tier labelled clients who were late last year

Practice tips

17 August 202615 min read

Busy-season triage: how to order the work when it all arrives at once

The crush isn't a client behaviour problem, it's a calendar design problem — and two of the three revenue authorities have already solved it. Both solved it the same way, and both put your least reliable clients first.

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Two Practice Manager web addresses for the same job — one reached from Job Manager carrying a uuid, one reached from the client's Jobs tab carrying a numeric id — converging on a single folder, Acme Trading Ltd / Jobs / J000042 - FY25 Tax Return, composed from the job's own number and name, above a note that keying the folder on the address instead splits one job across two folders

Guides

14 August 202613 min read

Filing by client isn't enough: job and quote documents in XPM

One folder per client stops working around year three. Filing by job and quote is the fix — but only if you settle four things first: what the folder is called, when it comes into existence, what happens to the folders you already made by hand, and whose storage it sits in.

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Four Xero products — Xero HQ, Practice Manager, Workpapers and Xero Tax — merging into a single Partner Hub navigation listing Clients, Insights, Tax, Payroll, Report templates, Ask, Jobs, Time and Billing, beside a separate column for client documents that is not named anywhere in the announcement

Practice tips

14 August 202612 min read

Partner Hub is absorbing Practice Manager. What about your documents?

Xero is folding Practice Manager, Xero HQ, Workpapers and Xero Tax into one product, and most regions have already moved. Across every page Xero has published about it, the word “document” does not appear once — which is the most useful thing to notice.

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A bar chart of statutory record-retention periods — New Zealand 7 tax years, Canada 6, the United Kingdom 5, Australia 5, the United States 3 — each with a paler extension for its notable longer period, above a separate AML/CDD bar of 5 to 7 years that starts only when the client leaves

Practice tips

10 August 202616 min read

How long must accountants keep client records?

Five to seven years in most Xero markets — but that number hides three obligations, three clocks and a ceiling most policies forget. Then the harder half: can you still open the file when the period ends?

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The same request written two ways: a vague paragraph asking for “your 2025 records”, annotated with the five reasons requests stall, beside an itemised checklist naming periods and formats, three of seven items marked provided and the rest outstanding, with one upload link

Practice tips

4 August 202611 min read

How to stop chasing clients for documents: a five-step request system

Clients don't stall because they're disorganised. They stall because the request names categories instead of items, leaves the destination undefined, and never shows them what's left.

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The easy half — seven jurisdictions each ticked with the effect its own statute gives an electronic signature — above the half that decides it: the four things a signature has to prove, intent, consent, attribution and integrity, plus retention as a fifth no statute frames as a signature requirement

Practice tips

4 August 202613 min read

E-signature legality for accountants, by jurisdiction

An e-signed engagement letter is enforceable in every major Xero market, and has been for two decades. The harder question is evidence: what your audit trail can actually prove if a client denies signing.

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The onboarding timeline as ten rows, each with its elapsed time and who it waits on — eight of them the practice's own work, with rows one to four bracketed as a single ninety-minute sitting, and only two rows, the client signing and the records arriving, waiting on anybody outside the practice

Guides

4 August 202614 min read

The accounting client onboarding checklist: seven steps

A new client should be signed up, filed, invited and asked for records within a day of accepting your proposal. Here are the seven steps, the two waits that are legitimate, and the templates that make it repeatable.

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Cost per person per month against practice headcount for three pricing shapes: per seat flat at about $59 a person at any size, banded per firm falling from about $70 to $29 and then stopping at price on application, and flat per practice falling from about $20 to $3 as the practice grows

Practice tips

4 August 202614 min read

Document management for a Xero practice: five options, honestly compared

SuiteFiles, FYI, Karbon, Practice Manager's own tab, or the drive you already own. Five options with real prices, read from vendors' own pricing pages in August 2026, and a straight answer on which firm each one suits.

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Placeholders resolving against a client record: [CLIENT:NAME] filling as ACME Trading Ltd, a postal address, the primary contact's name, a custom GST period field and today's date — with a note that a primary-contact placeholder resolves to nothing if no contact is flagged primary in Practice Manager

Product

8 June 20264 min read

Stop retyping client data: templates that fill themselves

Your practice types each client's name, address and entity details dozens of times a year. XPM already knows all of it — templates should too.

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Two paths for the same client: four gates before a portal — create a password, forget it, verify your device, download the app — ending in a photo of a bank statement emailed instead, above a single-gate path where a link from the request lets them prove their email address and get in

Practice tips

12 May 20265 min read

Client portals your clients will actually use

Most portals fail at the login screen. The fix isn't more features — it's removing every step between “your accountant needs this” and “done”.

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A folder tree two levels deep — one client folder named from the Practice Manager record, a 2026 year folder, and evergreen Engagement, Identity and Correspondence folders — with a Misc folder crossed out, beside the three properties that make a structure survive: predictable, shallow, automatic

Guides

21 April 20266 min read

A sane folder structure for client documents in Google Drive

Shared drives drift into chaos one “final_v2” at a time. A structure that survives busy season has three properties — and you can automate all of them.

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Two sequences compared: signature season as it is, in six steps across two tools, ending in trying to remember whose letter is unsigned — and the same job from the client record in four, ending with the signed PDF and its certificate filing themselves

Product

2 April 20264 min read

E-signatures that never leave Practice Manager

Engagement letters shouldn't need a separate tool, a separate login and a separate audit trail. Here's how XTK handles signing from inside the client record.

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Two columns: what Practice Manager runs — jobs, time, WIP, invoicing — beside the half it is silent on, where documents sit in a Drive nobody tidies, signatures in a separate e-sign tool, client requests scattered across inboxes and templates retyped client by client

Company

10 March 20265 min read

Introducing XTK: the toolkit for Xero Practice Manager

Practice Manager is great at jobs and time — and silent on documents, signatures and client collaboration. XTK adds the missing half, in a panel that opens right inside it.

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