How to copy bank rules to another Xero organisation
Updated October 2026
Short answer: Xero can’t do it. There is no copy, export or import for bank rules, and Xero’s public API doesn’t include them. Each rule has to be recreated in the other organisation, by hand or with a browser extension such as RuleMover that fills in Xero’s rule form for you.
This comes up whenever a business gets a new Xero file: a sole trader becoming a company, a group adding an entity, a bookkeeper onboarding a client with the same suppliers as another. The most popular request for it on Xero’s ideas forum has over 500 votes.
Moving rules to another bank account in the same organisation?
You may not need to copy anything. Each bank rule has a “Run this rule on” setting. Open the rule, change it to all bank accounts (or to the new account), and save. One rule then covers every account in that organisation.
Before you start: set up the target organisation
A rule points at accounts, tax rates, contacts and tracking categories. If those don’t exist in the target organisation, you can’t finish the rule. Set them up first:
- Chart of accounts. Use the same account codes where you can. Xero lets you import a chart of accounts from a CSV file.
- Contacts. Export contacts from the source organisation and import them into the target.
- Tracking categories and options, with the same names.
- Tax rates. Any custom rates the rules use.
The manual method
- Open the source organisation in one browser tab and the target organisation in another.
- In the source, open the bank rules list. Rules are split into spend money, receive money and transfer rules.
- Open the first rule. Note everything on it: the any/all setting and every condition, the contact, each line’s description, account, tax rate, tracking and amount or percentage, the reference setting, the bank account it runs on, and the rule name.
- In the target, create a new rule of the same type and enter the same values. Save it.
- Repeat for every rule.
Tip: work through one rule type at a time and keep the same order in both tabs, so you can tick rules off as you go. Rules with several lines or percentage splits are the easiest to get wrong; open the saved copy and compare it with the original.
It works, but it is slow. At a few minutes per rule, a client with 100 rules is most of a day, and a typo in a condition means transactions quietly stop matching.
A faster way: RuleMover
RuleMover is a browser extension for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that does the manual method for you. It reads the rules from the source organisation’s screens, shows a preview that matches accounts, tax rates, contacts and tracking categories in the target, then fills in Xero’s own rule form for each one and saves it. Everything stays in your browser.
It is in pre-order now, with delivery by 15 December 2026 or a full refund.
See how it worksUnofficial, not affiliated with Xero.
Questions
- Can I export bank rules from Xero to a spreadsheet?
- No. Xero has no export or import for bank rules.
- Can an app copy them through the Xero API?
- No. Bank rules aren’t part of Xero’s public API, so apps connected to Xero can’t read or create them.
- Will Xero add this feature?
- Bookkeepers have asked for it since 2014. In January 2026 Xero marked the most popular request “Accepted” while its product team looks into it, without a date. Until it ships, the options are the manual method or a tool like RuleMover.