Automate Your Accounting with the Xero Skill: Manage Invoices, Contacts & Reports from Clawdbot

If you're running a business, accounting is one of those necessary evils that eats up time you'd rather spend doing actual work. What if your AI agent could handle the grunt work — listing invoices, creating contacts, pulling financial reports — all from natural language commands?

Enter the Xero skill for Clawdbot. It connects your Xero accounting data directly to your AI assistant using managed OAuth, so you never have to deal with API tokens or complex authentication flows yourself.

Who Needs This?

Freelancers and small business owners who want to quickly check outstanding invoices or add new contacts without opening the Xero app. Developers and ops teams who need to automate financial reporting or integrate accounting data into workflows. Anyone who's tired of context-switching between their AI assistant and their accounting software.

Installation

Install the skill with a single command:

npx clawhub@latest install xero

You'll also need a Maton API key (the skill uses Maton's gateway for managed OAuth):

1. Create an account at maton.ai
2. Go to maton.ai/settings
3. Copy your API key
4. Set it as an environment variable:

export MATON_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"

Setting Up Your Xero Connection

Before you can query Xero, you need to authorize the connection. The skill makes this easy:

import urllib.request, os, json
data = json.dumps({"app": "xero"}).encode()
req = urllib.request.Request("https://ctrl.maton.ai/connections", data=data, method="POST")
req.add_header("Authorization", f"Bearer {os.environ['MATON_API_KEY']}")
req.add_header("Content-Type", "application/json")
print(json.dumps(json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req)), indent=2))

This returns a URL — open it in your browser to complete OAuth authorization with Xero. Once done, you're connected.

Usage Examples

List All Your Contacts

import urllib.request, os, json
req = urllib.request.Request("https://gateway.maton.ai/xero/api.xro/2.0/Contacts")
req.add_header("Authorization", f"Bearer {os.environ['MATON_API_KEY']}")
print(json.dumps(json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req)), indent=2))

Create a New Invoice

Need to bill a client? Create an invoice programmatically:

import urllib.request, os, json

invoice_data = json.dumps({
    "Invoices": [{
        "Type": "ACCREC",
        "Contact": {"ContactID": "your-contact-id"},
        "LineItems": [{
            "Description": "Consulting Services",
            "Quantity": 10,
            "UnitAmount": 150.00,
            "AccountCode": "200"
        }]
    }]
}).encode()

req = urllib.request.Request(
    "https://gateway.maton.ai/xero/api.xro/2.0/Invoices",
    data=invoice_data,
    method="POST"
)
req.add_header("Authorization", f"Bearer {os.environ['MATON_API_KEY']}")
req.add_header("Content-Type", "application/json")
print(json.dumps(json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req)), indent=2))

Pull a Profit & Loss Report

Need a quick financial snapshot? Grab the P&L:

curl -g "https://gateway.maton.ai/xero/api.xro/2.0/Reports/ProfitAndLoss?fromDate=2024-01-01&toDate=2024-12-31" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MATON_API_KEY"

You can also pull Balance Sheets and Trial Balances using similar endpoints.

Pro Tips

• Invoice Types: Use ACCREC for sales invoices (accounts receivable) and ACCPAY for bills you owe (accounts payable)
• Multiple Connections: If you manage multiple Xero organizations, specify which one with the Maton-Connection header
• Filtering: Use the where query parameter to filter results (e.g., only unpaid invoices)
• Curl Gotcha: When using brackets in URLs (like fields[]), add the -g flag to disable glob parsing
• Rate Limits: The gateway allows 10 requests per second per account — plenty for most use cases

What You Can Automate

With Clawdbot and the Xero skill, you can:

• "List all unpaid invoices over $1000"
• "Create a contact for Acme Corp with email billing@acme.com"
• "Show me the profit and loss for Q1 2025"
• "What's my balance sheet look like?"
• "Find all payments received this month"

Conclusion

The Xero skill removes the friction between your AI assistant and your accounting data. No more logging into Xero just to check a quick number or create a simple invoice. Your agent handles it, and you get back to work.

Links:

• Xero Skill on ClawdHub
• Xero API Documentation
• Maton Gateway (for API key and connection management)