Find and Recode in Xero is a powerful feature designed to help you correct errors and make bulk changes to transactions quickly and efficiently. Whether you’ve used the wrong account code, assigned the incorrect tracking category, or need to update a contact name across multiple entries, Find and Recode saves valuable time by allowing you to amend multiple transactions at once—without the need to edit them individually. This tool is especially helpful when tidying up your bookkeeping or making end-of-year adjustments. Here’s how it works, with a couple of practical examples to show it in action.
Find and recode works by searching for a group of transactions that meet the conditions you enter. You can change: account code, tax rate, contact names, adding or changing tracking categories…
Let’s see Find and Recode in action…
Example 1
Imagine that I’ve posted a few invoices from the supplier “Contact A” in the nominal code “ Advertising and Marketing”. A few months later, I realised that I’ve made a mistake and the nominal code should be “Maintenance and repairs” instead of “Advertising and Marketing.”
With find and recode, I can change the nominal code in bulk rather than editing them one by one.
How do we do this?
- To be able to use find and recode, you need the adviser user role.
- Login into Xero – Accounting – Advance – Find and recode – Add a condition -In our example I need to select these two conditions: Contact “Contact A” and Account “Advertising and Marketing”.
- Then press search. All the transactions that meet these two conditions will appear. Select all the items.
Press recode and make the changes that you would like to. In our example, we need to choose the account “Repairs and maintenance” leaving in blank Contact and Tax rate.
- Press review and confirm.
Example 2:
Imagine that I’ve posted all the invoices from the supplier called “Contact A” in the tracking category “North”. Then, I’ve realised that the correct tracking category is “South”. To correct this in bulk, we will do the following:
- Login into Xero – Accounting – Advance – Find and recode – Add a condition
- In our example I need to select Contact “Contact A” and Region“North”.
- Then press search. All the transactions that meet these two conditions will appear. Select all the items.
- Press recode and make the changes that you would like to. In our example, we need to choose the region “South” leaving in blank the other conditions.
- Press review and confirm.
Read more of our tips for using Xero and if you need help with this, or with other advice, then please get in touch with our accounting team.