Implement Spread Across Your Finance Team

This document outlines key considerations and best practices when implementing Spread within a finance function.

Following this pathway ensures a smooth onboarding process, accurate financial data handling, and maximum benefit from the platform.

Lift-off!

Initial Setup and Billing

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

Invite Additional Finance Team Members

Invite additional members of the finance team from the Users tab.

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

Important:
If a team 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 finance team.

Once you have set up a Xero organisation you’ll be able to assign access from the ‘Users’ area.

Change Management

Training

We’d recommend that all users of Spread navigate to the Help area and complete the short training modules on Setting Up, Cost and Sales Inboxes and the Recurring Bills area.

Recommended Implementation Timing

Best Practice Timing

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

Implementing within this window allows the finance team to:

Establish a clean transition
Gain the maximum historical lookback benefit

Lookback Periods

When setting up, it’s important to be aware:

Start Date: This will pull in transactions based on Xero activity date i.e. everything that was processed or edited within Xero since the beginning of the prior month.

Transaction Date: This is based on Invoice or Spend/Receive Money transaction dates.

The Sales and Cost inboxes can only be pulled back to the beginning of the previous month. This is why we recommend setting Spread up within 1 month after closing a period. Depending on how and when the bookkeeping is done, you may be able to proceed outside of this recommendation.

Recurring Bills History

Spread will 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
Identify missing invoices and support accurate accruals

This historical view ensures accrual calculations reflect realistic expense patterns rather than relying solely on recent transactions.

Connect Your Organisation

Configure Settings

Select existing nominal codes for:

Payments
Accruals
Deferred revenue

Next, add the nominal codes you want Spread to track within the Costs and Sales inboxes.

These should typically include accounts related to:

Accruals
Prepayments
Deferred income

Examples may include:

Rent & Rates
Subscriptions
Insurance
Professional Fees
Sales codes such as Annual Memberships or Subscription Revenue

Important:
Codes added later will only pull new transactions, not historical activity.

After clicking Save, Spread will take approximately 5 minutes to pull through relevant transactions.

Set Up Recurring Bills

While transactions are importing, you can begin adding suppliers with regular recurring expenses to the Recurring Bills section.

This area helps monitor for missing invoices so that appropriate accruals can be created.

The billed amount will display a 12-month lookback from Xero based on invoices or spend money transactions.

For each supplier you wish to track:

Select the nominal code to monitor
Choose the expected invoice frequency (Monthly, Quarterly, Annual)
Enter the expected invoice amount

Example:

A quarterly invoice of £1,500 will result in Spread recommending an accrual of £500 per month if no invoice has been received.

If the cost is typically variable, you can select Variable Average so Spread calculates an expected amount based on a historical lookback period.

You can also:

Determine a Start Date for tracking purposes
Optionally add an End Date if the contract has a defined duration

Configure Supplier Billing Basis

Next, click into Manage Supplier and confirm the correct billing basis.

This is important because it determines how Spread calculates the accrual suggestions and reversal journals when the invoice arrives.

What’s next?

Cost and Sales Inboxes

If you haven’t yet had the chance, this is the perfect time to complete our interactive training on the Cost and Sales inboxes.

You can now review the Cost and Sales inboxes periodically, either weekly or monthly to correctly handle adjustments for accruals, prepayments and deferred income to post back to Xero to ensure more accurate reporting.

You can use filters or the column sorting feature to batch items together for efficiency e.g. work through all cost transactions with detected accruals for a particular cost centre e.g. Rent & Rates

A good place to start:

Apply a Filter for transactions that have the ‘Spread’ status. This is everything where Spread has detected a timing difference.
Review items that have the Ready status - this will help you assess what Spread would have automated, had the automation setting been enabled for the Xero connection.
Next look at the transactions that are ‘To Review’.
Lastly, if you have any, look at the No Action Required items. These can be cleared down in bulk once you are happy.
Once you have finished reviewing the client, consider if you want to change any settings for automation or the tracking of specific nominal codes, or exclusion of specific suppliers.

Note: It’s easy to review any Spread automated by using the Automation filters - so even if you're not feeling 100% confident just yet, you can enable the automation setting and review the outcome easily later on for the client. Journals can also be easily reversed.

Recurring Bills

I’d recommend reviewing our interactive training for the Recurring area before jumping in.

The Recurring Bills area is a great end of period review point to ensure nothing material has been missed. Spread will suggest journals to accrue for missing purchase invoice and make suggestions for reversals once the invoice has landed. It is easy to set up suppliers for tracking within Spread as the previous 6 months of transaction history are displayed for each supplier.

If this is an arrears invoice the correct treatment will then be applied through the Cost inbox.

Feel free to create some test journals - Spread will suggest the reversal when the bill lands.

I’d recommend reviewing our interactive training for the Recurring area before jumping in.

Existing Journals

Prepayments & Deferred Revenue

If there is an existing prepayment schedule already in Xero, and the original invoice does not appear in Spread, we recommend leaving the existing schedule in Xero for now.

Ensure the end date aligns with the prepayment period.

Future invoices from that supplier will still be captured by Spread and handled correctly going forward.

Existing Accruals

If previously accrued expenses have not yet been reversed, you have two options:

Option 1

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

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

Option 2

Add the supplier to the Recurring Bills area with the Start Date set to the next billing cycle.

If your finance team typically posts summarised journals, you will need to decide which of the above approaches works best within your existing process.

Workflow Variability

Several factors may influence how the finance team interacts with Spread during day-to-day operations, including:

Individual working preferences within the finance team
Existing internal accounting processes
Integration with other accounting automation tools

While these factors typically do not disrupt implementation, they may affect how Spread is incorporated into the overall finance workflow.

Areas Where Workflows May Differ

The finance team may need to determine how to:

Reverse accruals
Validate transactions against source documents
Manage accrual information currently maintained in spreadsheets

Establishing a Standardised Accrual Workflow

To ensure Spread remains a reliable financial control point, the finance team should align on a consistent process for handling accruals.

This includes coordinating Spread with any OCR extraction tools or invoice capture systems currently used within the organisation.

Benefits of Standardisation

Spread reflects accurate financial data
Processes remain consistent across the finance team
Easier onboarding and training of new team members
Easier transfer of responsibilities within the finance department

Recommended Approach

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

Recommended workflow:

Post expense invoices and receipts directly to the correct cost centres, automating supplier capture through your OCR or invoice capture tool where possible.
Use Spread to manage:
- Prepayments
- Accruals
- Deferred income
- Accruals for missing bills
- Accrual reversals

This ensures Spread delivers its full automation and financial control benefits.

Workflow Support

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

If you would like assistance reviewing your processes or establishing a standardised accrual workflow, please schedule a call with us.

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