Ethical CFO
Helping a Sydney-based outsourced CFO take on multi-year Xero rescue jobs — using AI-driven reconciliation and email-based invoice discovery.
Accounting
Financial Services
Services
AI Automation
Category
Advisory & Accounting
Client
Ethical CFO
Automating Multi-Year Xero Rescue Jobs for Ethical CFO
Ethical CFO, led by Moushumi Sikand — Xero Sole Practitioner of the Year — helps purpose-driven Australian businesses gain financial clarity. A core part of the practice is bookkeeping rescue work: taking on clients who are 1 to 5 years behind on reconciliation, with no Xero set up, missing GST lodgements, and supplier invoices buried across email. The work is high-value, but the manual click-by-click data entry has historically capped how many of these clients an outsourced CFO can realistically take on.
The Challenge
Backlog
Rescue clients arrive with years of bank statements, no chart of accounts, no Xero history, and a backlog of supplier invoices scattered across an inbox.
Every transaction needs a merchant, an account code, and a plain-English description.
Some clients have 5+ years of unfiled books and no GST lodgements despite being GST registered.
Missing receipts have to be chased manually across thousands of emails.
The bottleneck isn't expertise — it's the sheer volume of manual data entry standing between a fresh Xero file and a compliant set of books.
The Solution
Phlo built two AI-driven automations for Ethical CFO. A Claude-powered Chrome extension that reconciles Xero transactions like a trained bookkeeper, and an email integration that lets Claude search an entire client mailbox for missing supplier invoices and receipts — all with human review built in.
Key Features
Automated Xero Reconciliation: a Claude browser extension reads each transaction inside Xero, identifies the merchant, selects the most appropriate account code, and fills the Who / What / Why fields straight down the screen.
Human-in-the-Loop by Design: the model never clicks Submit. A bookkeeper approves every page before anything is committed to Xero — sidestepping the risk of automated write-access to live financial records.
Audit-Ready CSV Log: every action the model takes is written to a downloadable CSV, giving Ethical CFO a clean trail for client review and quality assurance.
Email-Based Invoice Discovery: an MCP-backed integration with Gmail or Outlook lets Claude trawl a client's mailbox for supplier invoices, receipts, and ABNs — turning a chaotic inbox into a searchable financial source.
Australian Bookkeeper Prompting: the model is instructed to behave as an experienced Australian bookkeeper, with rules tailored to Xero account structures, GST treatment, and common merchant categories.
The Results
Multi-year reconciliation backlogs that previously took weeks of manual entry can now be processed in a single sitting, with humans reviewing instead of typing.
Ethical CFO can take on rescue clients she'd previously have had to turn away — unlocking a category of small Australian businesses sitting on years of unfiled books.
Supplier invoices buried inside client inboxes are made searchable, eliminating the back-and-forth chase for receipts.
Every entry is reviewable and logged — no AI black box, no unexpected changes inside Xero.
