Key takeaways
- Xero has no total size or record count: run the Account Transactions report from your first transaction to today and count the rows.
- Only the administrator user role can run and export every report, and the subscriber starts as standard + reports until they switch.
- Xero offers no one-click export: the ledger, chart of accounts and contacts, plus invoices and bills, fixed assets and inventory items each have their own export, and reports come from the reports screen.
- You don't need to export anything to apply: have your transaction count, years of history and number of users ready, and the data vendor anonymizes the records before any AI lab sees them.
01
What is Xero data, and why do AI labs and data vendors buy it?
The short answer
Xero data is the accounting record of a business that keeps its books in Xero, cloud accounting software: the ledger of every money entry, the invoices and bills, the contacts they belong to, and the bank transactions matched against them. AI labs (companies that build and train AI models) and data vendors (companies that anonymize business records and package them for those labs) buy a copy because the matching decisions bookkeepers made over the years show how a real business turns raw bank activity into organized books.
What a Xero organization records
Xero calls a business's own set of books an organization. Inside it, the general ledger is the complete list of every entry that moved money, each filed under an account such as sales, rent or wages. Alongside the ledger sit the sales invoices a business sends, the bills it receives from suppliers, the contacts (customers and suppliers) they belong to, and optional lists of fixed assets (equipment the business owns) and inventory items.
Most Xero organizations also receive a bank feed, a daily import of the transactions from the business's bank account. A bookkeeper then does reconciliation, which means matching each bank line to the invoice or bill it paid, or filing it under the right account when no invoice exists.
Why reconciled books teach an AI model something
An AI model learns by studying a very large number of examples and finding the patterns in them, and those examples are called training data. A reconciled Xero ledger holds thousands of small judgments, each one pairing a bank line with the account code or invoice that a person chose for it. Those pairs show the question (what is this payment for?) next to the answer a trained bookkeeper gave.
AI labs now want to train AI agents, software that carries out a job step by step, and bookkeeping is a job an agent could learn. A data vendor can turn anonymized pairs into worked examples that an agent studies like an answer key. It can also build a practice copy of the bookkeeping task in which the agent is scored on each attempt. The full mechanism is in AI training data: why AI companies want your company's data.
The invoice reports add a second lesson. Receivable and payable detail shows invoices, credit notes, overpayments and prepayments side by side, so each customer's and supplier's whole payment story is visible, including the payments that arrived late or only in part.
How Xero fits into a dataset
Xero is usually one app among several in a company's dataset, alongside email, documents and customer records. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to. The price covers the whole dataset, not each app on its own, and what your data is worth explains what moves it.
02
Where does Xero show how much data you have?
The short answer
Xero shows no total size or record count anywhere. The closest figure is the number of rows in the Account Transactions report when it is run from the organization's first transaction to today. Xero's administrator user role can run and export every report, so use it for the count.
How to count your transactions
The steps below produce one transaction count from Xero's own reports. Xero's export overview names Account Transactions as the report that lists every transaction.
- Sign in with the administrator user role. Xero's subscriber is the person who created the organization or took over that role. A subscriber begins as a standard + reports user, and the role can be changed to administrator in the user settings.
- Go to the reports screen and locate Account Transactions.
- Set the date range to begin at the organization's first transaction and end today. If the organization uses several currencies, select all columns, including the foreign-exchange (FX) columns.
- Export the report and count its data rows. That number is your transaction total.
- To size invoices and bills separately, run Receivable Invoice Detail and Payable Invoice Detail over the same dates.
What your Xero role decides
Every Xero pricing plan can run these reports, so the plan does not limit the count. Your user role does, because it decides which reports you can see. Xero's pages on the subscriber and the standard user role describe the differences.
| User role | What it can do with reports |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Runs and exports all reports. |
| Standard + reports (the subscriber's starting role) | Views, runs, prints and exports most reports, but cannot save draft reports or publish them. |
| Standard without the reports permission | Sees sales and purchases reports by default, and little beyond them; no access to the budget manager or manual journals. |
Why the row count can fall short
The report counts what is in the date range you chose, so a range that starts after the first entry undercounts. A business that moved to Xero from other software may also hold earlier years only as conversion balances, which are single opening entries that summarize what was owed on the day of the move. Rows from before that point are not real transactions, and the count should say so.
03
What should you know about your Xero data before you apply?
The short answer
Have three facts ready: your transaction count, the years of history and the number of people with a login. They go into the data manifest, the written summary of which apps hold your records, how many years each covers and roughly how much. You don't need to run an export to find them, and applying through micro1 shares no data.
The record count
The unit for Xero is records, and the number is the row count of the Account Transactions report over all dates. Every posting to the ledger appears as a row in that report, which makes it the closest Xero comes to a grand total.
The years of history
The years of history run from the date of the oldest real transaction in that report. If the business started on other software and carried its balances into Xero, count from the first genuine transaction and not from the conversion entries.
The number of users
Count each person who can log in to the organization, and include the outside accountants and bookkeepers you have invited. The subscriber is one of those people.
What you don't need to do first
You don't need to export anything to apply, and you don't need to clean or scrub an export. The data vendor anonymizes the records before anyone else sees them, and nothing moves until a lawyer-reviewed license is signed. The application, the intro call and each later step are laid out in how to sell your company's data.
04
How do you export your full Xero history?
The short answer
Xero has no single full export. An administrator saves the general ledger, the chart of accounts and contacts, then invoices and bills, then fixed assets and inventory items as separate files from separate places in Xero, then adds a set of reports from the reports screen. The files come out as CSV/XLS for most items, with MYE, TXT, Google Sheets and PDF available for some.
Who can export
What you can export depends on your user role, and the administrator role is the only one that reaches every report. Log in as an administrator before starting. Xero also says it backs up the organization's data on its own side, but that the business is responsible for keeping its own records.
The steps, in the order Xero suggests
- Log in as an administrator.
- Begin with the general ledger, which Xero lets you save as CSV/XLS, MYE or TXT.
- Move on to the chart of accounts (the list of accounts the ledger files its entries under), then contacts, invoices and bills, fixed assets and inventory items. Each has an export button in its own part of Xero.
- Open the reports screen and export Account Transactions, Receivable Invoice Detail and Payable Invoice Detail across all dates.
- Then export the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement once per year, the Trial Balance with earlier periods included, and the Bank Reconciliation report.
Xero's overview also recommends sales tax reports for each filed return period, the Fixed Asset Reconciliation report, and the Inventory Item List report. Add them if the business uses those features.
Which file format each item uses
Formats depend on the item. CSV/XLS is available for every item in the table, and the other formats are extras for some of them.
| Item | CSV/XLS | Other formats |
|---|---|---|
| General ledger | Yes | MYE, TXT |
| Budget | Yes | Google Sheets |
| Chart of accounts | Yes | None |
| Contacts | Yes | None |
| Fixed assets | Yes | None |
| Inventory items | Yes | |
| Invoices and bills | Yes | None |
| Reports | Yes | Google Sheets, PDF |
What a Xero export leaves out
Xero's overview says nothing about files attached to invoices, bills or contacts, and it describes no bulk download for them. If you need those attachments, ask Xero support how to get them. The overview also says nothing about how long each export takes, so run them one at a time and check each file before moving on.
Sources: Xero Central, About exporting data out of Xero, About the Xero subscriber and The standard user role explained. Steps checked against these pages in November 2026.
05
What stays private when Xero data is licensed?
The short answer
The company decides which exports leave Xero, and the data vendor replaces names and other personal details with consistent stand-ins before an AI lab sees anything. The company keeps ownership of its books, and the license covers defined records for a defined use.
You choose what is in scope
A company can leave its bank feed connections and its payroll records inside Xero. The ledger and invoice exports already hold the most useful history, so those can be licensed on their own.
Names are replaced before a lab sees them
Anonymization means replacing every detail that identifies a person or a business, such as a name or an email address, with a stand-in that is the same every time it appears. A customer's invoices, payments and credit notes still line up with one another, but the customer can no longer be identified. The method, including what is deleted outright and how you review samples, is in how company data is anonymized for AI training.
Ownership and payment
Licensing gives the buyer limited rights to a copy, while the company keeps ownership of the originals. The terms that matter, such as exclusivity, permitted use and deletion, are covered in data licensing. micro1 pays in full within 30 days of accepting the data, usually as a single payment.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Can I export everything from Xero in one file?
No. Xero's own guidance is to export each area of Xero, such as the general ledger, contacts and invoices, one at a time, and to export the reports from the reports screen separately.
Which Xero user role do I need to export reports?
The administrator role, which reaches every report. A standard user can export most reports only with the reports permission, and cannot save drafts or publish.
Is the Xero subscriber an administrator by default?
No. A subscriber starts out with the standard + reports user role, whether they created the organization or had the subscription transferred to them. They can switch to administrator whenever they need full access.
Which Xero report lists every transaction?
Account Transactions. If the organization uses several currencies, select all columns, including the FX columns, before you export it.
Do we need to export Xero before we apply?
No. The application takes about two minutes and shares no data. You only need your transaction count, your years of history and your number of users for the intro call, and you can read the first two from the Account Transactions report. The exports are needed later, when the records are transferred after you sign the license.
Are invoice and bill attachments part of a Xero export?
Xero's export overview does not mention them. Files attached to invoices, bills or contacts are not covered, so ask Xero support how to retrieve them if you want them in the dataset.
What is Xero data worth to AI labs and data vendors?
Xero history is priced as part of a whole dataset rather than on its own. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, and the price depends on the years of history and how completely the records show each job. What your data is worth explains the factors.
Bottom line
Know what is in Xero, then see what it is worth
You don't need to export anything to apply. Apply in two minutes, describe your records on the intro call, and micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to, prices the whole dataset and sends an offer 1–2 days later.
Not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures come from micro1's published pages and public reporting as of November 2026.