What can an AI agent do with
Manual journals?
This lets the app view and post manual journals. Accountants use these to make adjustments and fix mistakes in the books.
How to spot it
On a Xero connection or settings screen, this is accounting.manualjournals.
With it, an agent can
- Create manual journals, as drafts or already posted.
- Update draft or posted manual journals.
It cannot, on its own
- See the full general ledger. That is accounting.journals.read.
- Attach files to a journal. That is accounting.attachments.
What a bad day looks like
One wrong journal can quietly shift amounts between accounts and throw off your profit, loss, and tax figures.
Set it up safer
- Use accounting.manualjournals.read if it only needs to look.
- Have your bookkeeper approve every journal before it posts.
Ask the company selling the agent
- Will your agent post journals directly, or leave them as drafts?
- Who checks the journals it creates?
Source
Checked against Xero documentation on 2026-09-28. All Xero permissions →
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