Purchase Orders and Approvals for Xero

Yes, on the Business plan or with the budgets feature enabled. Zahara shows what's already committed and what's still available, and can factor that into approval — so spend is checked against budget before it's approved or pushed to Xero, not after.

Yes. Zahara routes approvals by value, so you can auto-approve lower-value spend and escalate anything above a threshold to the right person — for example, invoices up to £250 handled automatically, larger amounts sent to a department head or head of finance. It's your policy, applied consistently every time.

Not necessarily. You can require a matched purchase order before an invoice auto-approves, or allow trusted-supplier invoices to run through without one. Many teams use both: PO-backed invoices for project spend, and no-PO auto approval for routine, recurring bills.

They can. You can set approved invoices to export to Xero automatically, or send them manually if you'd rather add a final check. Automatic export saves the most time — approved invoices land in Xero coded and ready to pay.

Yes. Every approval is logged — automatic or manual — with who or what approved it and when. You get a clear, complete audit trail in Zahara before anything syncs to Xero, so nothing is a black box.

Suppliers email invoices to your Zahara Invoice Inbox. Zahara's AI reads each one — including line items — and checks it against your workflow: is it from a trusted supplier, does it match its purchase order, is it within budget, and is it free of duplicates? If every condition passes, the invoice is approved automatically and pushed to Xero. If anything looks off, it drops into a manual approval step instead.

No. You configure your workflow rules, trusted suppliers and value limits once, and Zahara applies them from then on. There's no technical setup or IT involvement — connect Xero, set your rules, and let the automation run.

Auto approvals let Zahara sign off invoices automatically when they meet the rules you set, then export them straight to Xero — fully coded and ready to pay. Instead of every invoice waiting on a person, only the ones that need a human decision get routed to one. Everything else flows through untouched.

It isn't rejected — it's simply routed into your standard approval workflow and sent to the right approver, with reminders to keep it moving. Auto approval handles the straightforward invoices so your team can focus on the ones that genuinely need a decision.

Several checks run before anything reaches Xero. Zahara flags duplicate references and suspicious details to help prevent double payments, and its 3-way matching compares the invoice against the purchase order and goods received note — checking quantity, price and line descriptions — to catch mismatches before approval. Anything that fails a rule is held back for manual review rather than paid in error.

You decide. Auto approval is best suited to invoices from trusted suppliers, invoices that match a purchase order at line-item level, and spend that sits within budget and below any value limits you've set. You stay in control of exactly which conditions qualify an invoice for a touchless run.