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Finance & reportingIntermediateDocs-checked, not yet hands-on tested

AI agent for P&L and month-end reporting

Pull your real profit and loss from Xero or QuickBooks, explain the variances, and build the management report in Excel.

Starter prompt

Using the Xero tools, pull the profit and loss for last month and for the same month last year. Build a one-page management report: revenue, gross margin, operating expenses by category and net profit, with the change versus last year in currency and %. For every line that moved more than 10%, give a one-line likely reason and the invoices or accounts behind it. Read only: do not create or edit anything in Xero. List any number you could not tie back to the P&L report.

Config

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xero": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@xeroapi/xero-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "XERO_CLIENT_ID": "your_client_id_here",
        "XERO_CLIENT_SECRET": "your_client_secret_here",
        "XERO_SCOPES": "accounting.reports.profitandloss.read accounting.reports.balancesheet.read accounting.reports.trialbalance.read accounting.invoices.read accounting.settings.read"
      }
    }
  }
}

Setup steps

  1. Create a Xero Custom Connection for your organisation (or an Intuit developer app for QuickBooks). Try it on the Xero Demo Company first.
  2. In Claude Desktop, open Settings > Developer > Edit config, paste the config with your client ID and secret, and restart.
  3. Run the starter prompt, then tie the totals back to the P&L report in Xero before you trust anything else.
  4. Install Claude for Excel from Microsoft AppSource and ask Claude to turn the report into a workbook with live formulas.
  5. No accounting connection? Export the P&L or general ledger to CSV and ask the same questions in Julius.

Why this works

The official MCP servers hand Claude the actual P&L report instead of a pasted screenshot, and Claude for Excel edits your workbook while keeping formula relationships intact, so every number can be traced back to its source.

Watch out

Both servers can also write (the Xero one creates invoices and contacts), so grant read-only scopes. For QuickBooks, set QUICKBOOKS_DISABLE_WRITE, QUICKBOOKS_DISABLE_UPDATE and QUICKBOOKS_DISABLE_DELETE to true. AI can flip signs or mix up periods: check totals against the source report. This helps you prepare reports; it doesn't replace your accountant.

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