Xero tasks you can
hand to a VA
Most of the hours a business burns inside Xero are coding, chasing and preparing — not deciding. That part travels well. Here's the split we use when we scope a Xero role, and the order clients actually hand it over in.
Xero is the most common system we place people into, and the pattern is remarkably consistent: the owner or the practice principal is doing three or four hours a week of work that has no judgement in it at all. Coding the bank feed. Entering bills. Chasing the same six debtors. Preparing the pay run so someone else can press the button.
The useful distinction is not "bookkeeping vs not bookkeeping". It's preparation versus authority. Anything that ends in a decision, a lodgement or a payment leaving your bank account stays with you or your registered agent. Everything that leads up to it can be handed over — and that's most of the clock.
This guide lists the tasks specifically, names the boundary you can't cross in Australia, and sets out the order that actually works. The order matters more than people expect: hand over the wrong thing first and you spend a fortnight unpicking it.
Who this is for
✓Worth your time if
- You run Xero for your own business and it eats half a day a week
- You're a bookkeeping or accounting practice with more compliance work than capacity
- Your bank feed is more than a week behind, more often than not
- You already know roughly what needs doing and just need the hands
✕Probably not if
- You need someone to give tax or BAS advice — that requires a registered agent
- Your file hasn't been reconciled in over a year (get a clean-up done first, then hire)
- You want someone to authorise payments — no offshore team member should hold bank authority
- You're looking for Xero training for yourself
What a Xero VA actually does
Grouped roughly by how quickly clients hand each one over. The top four are usually live inside a fortnight.
Daily or weekly coding of the bank feed against your chart of accounts, matching to bills and invoices, flagging anything unrecognised in a running query list rather than guessing. This is the single most common first task because errors are visible immediately and cost nothing to fix.
Bill entry from Hubdoc or Dext, supplier statement reconciliation, duplicate checking, and preparing the payment run as a batch file ready for your authorisation. They prepare it; you release it.
Raising invoices from your job or practice system, sending statements, and running the debtor follow-up sequence on a fixed cadence — first reminder, second reminder, phone call flagged to you. Most businesses have no cadence at all, which is why the ledger drifts.
Timesheet collection and entry, checking hours against rosters, preparing the pay run in draft, and reconciling superannuation batches. The pay run is posted and STP-declared by you.
Reviewing GST coding across the period, clearing the suspense account, reconciling the GST control accounts back to the ledger, and handing your agent a completed reconciliation pack rather than a shoebox. Preparation only — see the boundary below.
Aged payables and receivables reports, unreconciled item chase-ups, fixed asset register updates, tracking-category corrections, and a short written list of anything that needs your eyes.
Building and scheduling the reports you actually read — cash position, aged debtors, gross margin by tracking category — so they arrive rather than being requested.
What must not leave your desk
This is the part most outsourcing content skips, and it's the part that matters in Australia. A VA prepares; a registered agent lodges and advises; you authorise money movement.
- BAS and tax lodgementLodging a BAS for a fee, or advising on it, requires registration with the Tax Practitioners Board. Your VA prepares the numbers; your registered BAS or tax agent reviews, signs and lodges.
- Bank authorityNo offshore team member should ever hold payment authorisation or a bank token. They prepare the ABA batch or payment schedule; you release it.
- Tax and structuring adviceAnything that answers "should I…" rather than "here is what happened" belongs with your accountant.
- Signing off financialsYear-end financials, director declarations and STP finalisation stay with you or your accountant.
The order to hand it over
Not the logical order — the one that works. Each step buys the trust that makes the next one easy.
Bank reconciliation, first and always
Start here even if it isn't your biggest time cost. Mistakes are obvious the moment you look at the ledger and take seconds to correct, so both sides find out quickly whether the person can actually do the work. Give them a query list to park anything unclear — the discipline of "flag it, don't guess it" is the habit that makes everything later safe.
Accounts payable entry
Once coding is trusted, bill entry follows naturally — it uses the same chart of accounts and the same judgement. Keep authorisation with you from day one and never move it, so there's no expectation to unwind later.
Accounts receivable and debtor follow-up
This is usually where the business feels the hire. A consistent follow-up cadence pulls cash forward within a month, and it's work most owners avoid, so nobody misses it.
Payroll preparation
Only after two or three clean cycles of the above. Payroll is where errors are expensive and visible to staff, so it needs an established working rhythm first.
BAS preparation
Last, and only into a reviewing agent. By this point they know your coding conventions well enough that the reconciliation pack is genuinely useful rather than something your agent has to redo.
Giving Adviser access on day one
It's the default thing to click and it's almost always wrong. Adviser access in Xero lets someone change the chart of accounts, edit locked periods and adjust conversion balances — none of which a new starter should touch. Set them up as a Standard user (plus Payroll admin only when payroll is handed over), keep period lock dates in place, and review the audit history in the first fortnight. The handovers that go wrong are rarely about competence; they're about someone being given room to change history before anyone knew what "normal" looked like.