How to export all your data from Xero

If you search "export all data from xero" or "xero backup", the answer is that Xero has no single button for it. You export area by area and report by report. Here is the free manual route with Xero's own help pages, a table of what you can and cannot get this way, and a read-only archive tool for the rest.

The short answer

Can you export all data from Xero? Not in one click. Xero's help page About exporting data out of Xero says that to export all of an organisation's information you export data from the individual areas of Xero and reports from the reports screen. It also says you are responsible for keeping records of data entered in Xero, so it recommends regular backups of your own. Your user role decides what you can export.

This guide is for keeping your own records: a year-end, a closing, a sale of the business, an accountant handover, or a retention duty. How long you must keep records depends on your country and business, so ask your accountant or check your tax authority. This page gives no legal advice.

The manual route, step by step

Xero recommends exporting your chart of accounts, contacts, invoices, bills and fixed asset list, plus a set of reports. Each step below links the Xero Central page it comes from.

Contacts. In the Contacts menu, choose the group you want, such as Customers. At the top right, click the menu icon, then Export. You get a CSV file. Xero notes that the employees group cannot be exported. Source: Export contacts from Xero.
Invoices and bills. For invoices, open Sales then Invoices, pick a tab, optionally narrow it with Search and a date range, and click Export. For bills, open Purchases then Bills, click the menu icon next to New Bill and choose Export bills. The file is a CSV with one row per line item. Xero exports at most 500 transactions at a time, so a larger set has to be done in batches by status or date. Source: Export invoices and bills out of Xero.
Reports. In the Reporting menu choose All reports, open a report, click Export and pick PDF, Excel or Google Sheets. Xero recommends the Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss for each year, the Trial Balance including past periods, the Account Transactions report, and the Receivable and Payable Invoice Detail reports. Run each one year at a time. Source: Export and print a report.
Chart of accounts, fixed assets, inventory items, general ledger, budget. Xero's overview table lists each of these as exportable, as CSV or Excel files, and links the how-to for each one. Start from the table on the overview page.
One invoice as a PDF. Open the invoice and use Print PDF. Xero has no bulk option for separate files, which is covered in download all Xero invoices as separate PDFs.

What you can get by hand, and what you cannot

Data	By hand	Where it gets hard
Contacts	CSV per contact group	Employees group is not exported
Chart of accounts, fixed assets, inventory items	CSV or Excel, per Xero's overview table	Each one is a separate export
Invoices, bills, credit notes	CSV with one row per line item	500 transactions at a time, so a big file is many batches
Reports	PDF, Excel or Google Sheets	One report and one period at a time; ten years of three reports is thirty exports
Each invoice as its own PDF	Print PDF on one invoice	Hundreds of invoices means hundreds of clicks
Files attached to invoices and bills	Document by document inside Xero	The overview table lists no attachment export
Payroll	Payroll reports, with the right user permission	Needs the approve payroll permission

The free route is real and complete for a small organisation. It gets slow when the organisation has many years, many invoices, or many attachments, and nothing in it checks that you did not miss a file.

Option: Unapprove "Company archive"

Unapprove is a web application for Xero users. Its Company archive reads your organisation and gives you three downloads, each its own ZIP. It only reads from Xero and changes nothing in your books. The files stream from Xero to your browser and are not stored by Unapprove.

Data ZIP. A Lists/ folder with CSV files for contacts, accounts, items, sales invoices, bills and credit notes, and bank transactions if you gave read permission for them. A Reports/ folder with the Trial Balance, Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet for each financial year, up to the 10 most recent, as files such as FY2026_trial_balance.csv. In the root, index.csv, README.txt and SHA256SUMS.txt.
Invoice PDFs. Every sales invoice and sales credit note that is awaiting approval, awaiting payment or paid, as its own PDF. See the PDF guide.
Attachments. The files attached to your documents, counted first.

You can check it. index.csv has one row for every file with the row count, the total Xero reported and whether it is ok, failed, not fetched or not included. SHA256SUMS.txt works with sha256sum -c.
One extra permission, only here. Reports need Xero's read-only reports permission, which Unapprove asks for only when you start from the archive. Without it the index says "not included: permission not granted" and the ZIP still opens.
If a download stops. If Xero asks us to wait for long, the day's calls run out or the connection to Xero fails, the ZIP still closes and opens. index.csv marks each missing file "not fetched" and an _INCOMPLETE.txt file says why. Nothing is remembered between downloads, so a new one starts from the beginning. If your own connection drops, that ZIP is cut off and will not open.
Pace. Xero allows 60 calls a minute per organisation. The archive page shows the fewest calls and the time before you start.
The data lists are one row per document. Totals, status, currency, amount paid and amount due, but no invoice line items. If you need line items, Xero's own invoice export above has them.

What is not in the archive: payments, manual journals, payroll, bill PDFs, invoice line items, and a way to load the files back into Xero. It is a copy to keep, not a restorable backup.

Disclosure. Atesen Software, which publishes this guide, makes Unapprove. The manual steps above work without it.

Price. The Company archive has no separate price. It is included in the monthly plan, $29 per connected organisation, and in the Clean-up Pass, a one-off $49 for 30 days with no renewal. The free trial costs $0, needs no card and gives a sample you can repeat: the first 25 rows of each list and one report. Prices exclude VAT and sales tax. Founding offer: FOUNDING40 takes 40% off your first payment until 30 November 2026. An unused pass is refundable within 14 days. Checkout is by Paddle on the Unapprove site.

Get my free archive sample About Unapprove

If you want a backup every month

A one-off archive is not a schedule. Other tools run backups on a timetable. Prices were read from each vendor's page on 7 November 2026 and can change:

Ledgerscope: nightly backups, kept for a rolling 30 days. £7 per company per month, or US$9 in the rest of the world.
Xportmydata: weekly or monthly backups saved to your own cloud storage, from US$10 per organisation per month billed yearly. It also sells a single download for US$120 that includes attachments and, in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, payroll.
Boxkite: automatic backups to your own storage from $5 per month per organisation, and a one-off download at $49 per organisation. Its Professional plan, $15 per month, lists bank transactions, attachments and payroll for Australia, New Zealand and the UK; check what the one-off includes before you buy.

Which route fits

A small organisation, one year: Xero's own exports, free.
Many years, many invoices or files, and you want an index and checksums: the Company archive.
Payroll included, or a regular schedule: one of the backup services above.

Atesen Software is independent. Xero is a trademark of Xero Limited, and this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Xero. Xero's help pages were checked on 7 November 2026 and can change. Questions about this guide: support@atesensoftware.com.