Import Cleaner for Xero

Your Xero export, ready to use in Excel — and your upload, checked before it fails.

What it does

Generic data-cleaning add-ins can tell you a column is text. They cannot tell you that 06/03/2026 in a Xero export is 6 March because the organisation's regional setting is UK, that (45.00) is a negative, or that ContactName has to match Xero's existing contact exactly, down to the trailing full stop. This one knows it is a Xero file.

Two directions, one pane:

• Out of Xero. Xero export dates not working in Excel, numbers stored as text that will not sum, bracketed negatives, comma decimals, and the trailing and non-breaking spaces every export carries.
• Into Xero. A pre-flight check before you upload: missing or misspelled columns, dates in the wrong regional format, a bank statement whose amount is split across Debit and Credit, blank cells that import as zero, and contact names that will not match.

The one to know about

A contact name that does not match an existing Xero contact does not fail the import. It creates a second contact in your live ledger — Acme Ltd alongside Acme Ltd. — and merging them afterwards is real work in someone's accounts. The pre-flight check groups the near-misses before you upload, including the ones that differ only by a non-breaking space, which Excel's own TRIM will not remove.

Nothing ambiguous is applied quietly

06/03/2026 is two real dates and only the organisation's regional setting says which. The pane asks once, then lists every value that could be read both ways before it writes anything. That report is not a footnote — it is the screen.

Support

Email support@appgarden.co.uk. Include the Excel platform you are on (Windows, Mac or the web) and what the pane showed. If a check reported something you believe is wrong, the file itself is the most useful thing you can send — but only send one you are content to share, and read the privacy notice first.

Replies are best-effort, usually within a few working days. There is no phone line.

Using it

Open the file, then Home › Xero import › Check sheet. Choose which way the file is going — Clean a Xero export or Check before uploading — and the pane names the file type from its headers, lists what is wrong in Xero's terms, and shows a preview of every fix before it writes.

There is no score. A sheet with findings never reads as clean.

Free and paid

The whole check is free, in both directions, along with every explanation — and the space fix is applied for free too. Pro adds the rest of the fixes and remembers the organisation's date format per import type.

Undo is free in every tier, always. It is not a paid feature, it does not lapse with a licence, and it keeps working after one is cancelled. An add-in that can write to your workbook but charges to reverse it would be indefensible.

A Pro licence covers three installs — a desktop, a laptop and a machine that gets rebuilt. Team licences are a seat count, not a different feature set. Prices and checkout.

Paddle is the merchant of record and takes the payment. The terms of service, the refund policy — a full refund within 30 days of any payment — and the privacy notice set out the rest.

Your licence key

Keys are shown on screen at the end of checkout, not emailed. Keep the page, or paste the key straight into the pane under Licence. Lost it? Email support with the address you paid on.

Entering the key stores an entitlement on that machine. If Office clears its storage — which it does on the web, and Safari does on its own — re-entering the same key does not cost you a seat.

Known limits

• The organisation's date format is asked, not detected. Nothing inside a Xero export states it. The pane asks once and then reports every ambiguous value it acted on, which is the honest version of a guess.
• It reads the active sheet, not the file on disk, so a file's encoding is not visible to it. What it can see — a line break inside a cell, or text already mangled by being opened as Latin-1 — it reports.
• Values it cannot read are never rewritten. A date this add-in cannot parse is explained rather than guessed at, because a wrong date posted to a ledger is worse than a date the tool declined to touch.
• Xero's per-field character limits change from time to time. They live in a data file inside the add-in and are correct as at the build date, not as at this morning.
• Excel on Mac and on iPad are untested. The manifest permits them, so Microsoft lists them, but no verification run has happened on either. Please report anything odd.

Your data

Nothing in your workbook leaves your machine. The add-in talks to one server, and only about your licence key. Details in the privacy notice.