Implement Spread into your Accountancy Practice

This guide outlines the key considerations and recommended workflow for implementing Spread across an accountancy practice and rolling it out to clients Xero organisations.

Following this pathway will help your firm onboard clients smoothly, standardise how adjustments are managed, reduce spreadsheet dependency, and improve the accuracy and consistency of client management reporting.

Spread works best when it becomes a clear adjustment layer between source transactions in Xero and the journals required for accurate period reporting.

For practices, the goal is not just to implement a tool client by client, but to create a repeatable firm-wide workflow that staff can follow consistently across a portfolio of similar clients.

Change Management

The Benefits of Spread

Processes remain consistent across the firm
Client work can be transferred between staff members more easily
New team members can be trained faster
Reviews become more efficient and less dependent on individual spreadsheet habits
Partners and managers can rely on a consistent source of adjustment information
Clients receive more accurate and timely reporting

Every practice has slightly different workflows, team structures and client relationships. Before implementing Spread, here are some helpful areas to align on so the rollout feels smooth:

How accruals and prepayments are currently managed
Existing month-end workflows and review processes
How responsibilities are delegated across the Client team
How existing OCR or invoice capture tools are being used
If and when tracking categories are added to transactions to Xero

If you would like guidance on how Spread can fit in with your existing processes, our team would be happy to help.

Recommended Practice Approach

Supplier invoice processing can now be largely automated, with adjustments managed directly within Spread.

A recommended recurring workflow is:

Post expense invoices and receipts directly to the correct nominal codes and tracking categories in Xero, using OCR or invoice capture tools where possible.
Review postings to ensure the source transaction is coded correctly.
Check that tracking categories, cost centres or departments have been assigned correctly in Xero.
Once the transaction review is complete, work through the relevant Spread inboxes.
At the end of the reporting period, use the Recurring Bills area to accrue for missing costs and reverse previously accrued missing costs once the invoice has landed.
Review Spread reports and reconcile posted adjustments back to the client’s balance sheet in Xero.

This ensures Spread delivers its full automation and financial control benefits. Any tracking added to the source transaction in Xero will be replicated in the adjustment journals posted from Spread.

How to Get the Most from Spread in a Practice

Accurate Line Descriptions Mean More Accurate Journals

Spread reads Xero line descriptions first, before it looks at the attachment. The more precise the description on the transaction, the more confidently Spread can identify the correct period and draft the right journal first time.

If you are seeing lots of transactions marked as Not Identified, it is often because the line description is vague or missing.

For example:

Good description: Insurance - March 2026 to February 2027
Weak description: Insurance renewal

This is particularly important in a practice environment where bookkeeping may be performed by junior staff, offshore teams, outsourced bookkeeping providers or the client directly. Feeding this back early will improve Spread’s results and reduce review time across the portfolio.

Small changes in posting behaviour can create noticeably better month-end outcomes.

Remove the Noise So Staff Can Focus on What Matters

The goal is an inbox that only shows work worth doing.

Use Settings to exclude contacts or remove nominal codes that are not worth reviewing. Spread will stop showing those transactions in the inbox.

You can still perform a quick check in the auto-excluded tab at month end if required.

Most teams that clean up exclusions in the first week find their client inboxes are significantly cleaner by month-end, and review time drops accordingly.

Decide Which Clients Need Weekly vs Monthly Review

Not every client needs the same review cadence.

For higher-volume or more complex management accounts clients, weekly review can help keep Spread clean and reduce pressure at month end.

For lower-volume clients, a monthly review may be sufficient, provided transactions are posted and coded before the Spread review begins.

The key is to define the cadence client by client, then make sure the responsible team member follows it consistently.

Recommended Client Onboarding Timing

Best Practice Timing

Clients should ideally be implemented after a closed management reporting period, and no later than one month after the period ends.

If the client receives monthly management accounts, we recommend implementing Spread at the beginning of the new period so the team can benefit from the new workflow immediately.

Implementing within this window allows the practice to:

Establish a clean transition
Understand client chart of accounts structures and typical expense or sales transactions
Identify and understand transactional discrepancies
Gain the maximum historical lookback benefit
Avoid duplicating adjustments already posted under the previous workflow

Lookback Periods

When setting up a client, it is important to understand how far back Spread can look and what it can pull through.

By default, the Start Date can only be set to the beginning of the prior month. This is why we recommend setting up Spread within one month after closing a period.

Depending on how and when bookkeeping is completed, you may still be able to proceed outside this recommendation.

Key date definitions:

Start Date: Pulls in transactions based on Xero activity date, meaning everything processed or edited in Xero since the beginning of the prior month.

Transaction Date: Based on the invoice date or spend/receive money transaction date.

If you need to pull through transactions that precede the beginning of the previous month, speak to us.

Recurring Bills History

Spread can pull through a 12-month lookback for suppliers added to the Recurring Bills area. This helps to:

Calculate average values for variable expenses
Provide better visibility into historical supplier behaviour
Accrue for missing bills in a historical period
Identify when a previously accrued missing bill should be reversed once the invoice is received

This historical view helps ensure accrual calculations reflect realistic expense patterns rather than relying only on recent transactions.

Who to implement first?

Recommended Approach

Start with priority clients where Spread’s value will be clear and where the team can learn the workflow quickly.

A good first client typically has:

Regular monthly management accounts
Costs that are invoiced in arrears
Suppliers who bill in advance
Deferred income, such as subscriptions or memberships
A manageable transaction volume
A reasonably clean Xero file
A client team that is open to improving the reporting workflow

Using a client with these characteristics helps staff understand how Spread handles common accounting scenarios during the early stages of implementation.

Avoid starting with the most complex or least tidy client unless there is a strong operational reason to do so. A clear first implementation will make it easier to train the team and build confidence.

How to Transfer Away From Existing Workflows

Prepayments and Deferred Revenue

We recommend implementing Spread at the beginning of a new management period to avoid duplication of adjustments.

If there is an existing prepayment or deferred revenue schedule already in Xero, that is fine.

If these adjustments were previously posted as recurring journals, ensure the end date aligns with the service period.

If the practice maintains a prepayment or deferred revenue schedule in a spreadsheet and the adjustments are not yet posted to Xero, we recommend either:

Posting them at a detailed level as recurring journals with an end date set to the end of the prepayment or deferred revenue period; or
Posting summarised journals manually for each month until the last month covered by the existing schedule - these can be imported into Xero.

Future invoices will be captured by Spread and handled within the new workflow going forward.

To benefit from Spread with a clearly defined workflow, it is important that the team embraces the new process quickly and only uses spreadsheets for non-invoice-related adjustments such as provisions, WIP or other client-specific manual adjustments.

Existing Accruals

If previously accrued expenses have not yet been reversed, there are two options.

Option 1: Recreate the Accrual Through Spread

Void the existing journal in Xero and recreate the accrual through Spread in the Recurring Bills area.

Spread allows a 12-month lookback, which enables it to track when the reversal should occur once the invoice is received.

Option 2: Let the Existing Process Run Off

Maintain the existing process until all legacy accruals have been reversed.

Going forward, add the supplier to the Recurring Bills area with the Start Date set to the next billing cycle.

Handling Other Manual Accruals

If you would like to post other forms of manual accruals through Spread, such as tax provisions, payroll accruals or other recurring estimates, you can create a dummy supplier and add it into the Recurring Bills area to manage the process consistently.

How To Quickly Catch Up With Spread

When working through the inboxes, you can use the Activity Date filter to only review items that have been posted or edited within Xero since the implementation of Spread.

You might have tested Spread over a period which has now been closed. If you need to clear down the inbox quickly, you can filter by document date and use the bulk date applicator to match the service dates to the invoice date - this will ensure each transaction is set to no action required, allowing you to bulk clear the inbox down quickly. See the video below for a quick demonstration:

Lift-off! Initial Practice Setup

Initial set-up and billing

The user responsible for setting up and managing billing should complete the initial setup of Spread.

Where possible, this user should be the Master Administrator for your firm in Xero.

Important: due to the way a single token connection works for all users linked to the Spread practice workspace, this user must have access to all Xero clients that need to be connected.

Invite additional staff members from the Users tab.

Once invited, staff members can create their own Spread accounts and accept the invitation visible when they log in. They will see a banner prompting them to accept the invitation at the top of the screen.

Note: they will not receive an invitation by email.

Once users have accepted their invitation into the practice workspace, you will be able to assign access to the relevant client organisations from the Users area.

Important: if a staff member creates their own Spread account and connects to Xero before accepting the invitation, they risk creating a separate Spread workspace. This can lead to duplicated actions because they would be operating from an independent dashboard rather than the shared workspace used by the practice.

How to Connect a Client Organisation

Here’s a short 5 minute video guide that walks you through setting up a client in Spread.

The initial sync can take anywhere between 5 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the volume of transactions being pulled through. You will see the status change to Ready when the initial sync is complete and you then be able to start reviewing suggested journals.

Don’t forget to assign access to your staff members for each organisation from the Users area.

Training

Before using Spread, we’d recommend that all users navigate to the Help area and complete training relevant to their roles. We have several short training modules that cover:

How to use the Cost and Sales inbox - How to quickly review and post accruals, prepayments and deferred revenue journals to Xero from Spread.
Tracking Bills for Recurring Costs - How to set suppliers up for tracking, how to accrue for missing bills and how to reverse them later.
How Spread works (coming soon) - This is core knowledge that will help the team understand how Spread reads dates and how we populate journal schedules. (recommended for all users)
How to Reconcile Spread to your Balance Sheet - A run-through of how to use our reports to reconcile all adjustments Spread has posted back to your Balance Sheet in Xero

Training should be completed before staff begin posting journals for live clients.

For practice rollouts, we recommend identifying one internal Spread champion who understands the full workflow and can support other staff as new clients are added.

Internal Practice Rollout

Spread the word

To help with any internal communications, we’ve included a link to a document below to help explain to other internal stakeholders how everything works.

Spread Software for Internal Finance Teams

Spread Software for Clients

Team Email Template

Here's an email template you can copy/paste and send to the team once they have been invited to Spread:

Hi Team,

You’ve now been invited to join Spread, which we’ll be using as an adjustment layer with Xero for selected client organisations.

Spread will help us manage accruals, prepayments, deferred revenue and related journal schedules more efficiently within our client reporting workflow.

What is Spread and why are we using it?

Spread helps automate and standardise how we handle adjustments directly from source transactions in Xero. Instead of relying on spreadsheets and manual journals, it gives us a single, controlled process.

This will help us:

Improve reporting accuracy by keeping adjustments aligned with underlying transactions
Save time by reducing manual spreadsheet work and repetitive journal posting
Create consistency across client teams
Make client handovers easier
Improve review quality for managers and partners
Give clients cleaner, more reliable financial information over time

If there are any clients you think would be a good fit for Spread, please let me know and I will get them set up ready for you.

Next step: complete training

Before getting started, please head to the Help Centre and complete the relevant training modules.

Training is short and role-based, covering:

Cost & Sales Inbox – how to review and post accruals, prepayments, and deferred revenue
Tracking recurring costs – managing suppliers, accruing missing bills, and reversing them
How to Reconcile Spread to your Balance Sheet - how to reconcile Spread journals back to the balance sheet in Xero
How Spread works – Core knowledge on how Spread reads dates and populates journal schedules.

Important: Accept your invitation

Please make sure you:

Log into Spread and accept your invitation
Reply to this email (or message me) once done

Once you’ve accepted, I will assign you access to the relevant Client organisations.

⚠️ Important: Please accept the invitation before connecting to Xero yourself. This ensures you join the correct shared workspace and avoids duplicate environments.

If you have any questions as you get started, please reach out. We’ll also be refining our workflow as a practice to make sure we get the most out of Spread.

Thanks,

[Your Name]

Ongoing Workflow Support

We want to help ensure your practice gets the maximum benefit from Spread.

Our team is available to help you map and optimise your internal workflows when implementing Spread across clients.

If you would like assistance reviewing your processes, selecting the right first clients or establishing a standardised adjustment workflow, schedule a call with us.

Happy Spreading!

Getting The Most From Spread

Migrating Existing Workflows

Connect & Set Up

Getting to most from Spread

Migrating Exisiting Workflows