Xero Partner Hub: what changes for practices on Xero Practice Manager

What Xero Partner Hub is

Xero Partner Hub is the single home for Xero’s practice tools. Xero announced it at Xerocon Brisbane on 3 September 2025 and has rolled it out region by region since. It brings together Xero HQ, Xero Practice Manager (XPM), Xero Tax and a new workpapers product built with BGL. In the UK it also covers Payroll Manager. Xero’s AI assistant, JAX, is in beta on the homepage.

In Australia the products are now sold as three tiers. Which tier you get free depends on your Xero partner status.

When your practice moves to Partner Hub

You don’t have to do anything to move. Xero transitions practices automatically, and those that opted in early moved first.

At Xerocon London in July 2026, Xero said a fuller Partner Hub view would follow from October 2026. It will show book health, work status and month-end readiness across your clients in one view, and JAX will chase clients for documents.

What stays the same in Practice Management

Xero’s line is that “all of the core features and functionality you use today” in XPM, Xero Tax and Xero HQ are available in Partner Hub. Its Practice Management page lists the parts most firms run their week on:

• Job tracking and task assignment
• Staff scheduling
• Time entry, by duration or start and stop
• Turning time into invoices
• WIP reporting
• Job templates and workflows

Xero also says the move doesn’t change how you use or pay for your practice tools, that your data moves across, and that there’s no downtime. It hasn’t published a feature-by-feature comparison, so if your firm relies on an unusual report or custom field, test it in the new view rather than assuming.

Your XPM add-ons need Practice Manager API 3.1

Most firms on XPM also run apps that sync with it: proposals, document management, workflow tools, practice add-ons like AccountKit. Those apps talk to XPM through the Practice Manager API, and that API is changing version.

• 29 April 2026: Xero deprecated version 3.0 and released version 3.1, with JSON responses, field selection, new client fields and a Job State endpoint.
• 3 September 2026: version 3.1 started rejecting requests that don’t send the correct format headers.
• 2027: version 3.0 is retired. Xero’s developer changelog gives 6 May 2027; another Xero page has been quoted as 30 April 2027. Plan for the earlier date.

Xero is clear that new work goes into version 3.1 only. It hasn’t made any statement beyond that about long-term support for two-way sync, so the safe assumption is that an app still on version 3.0 next April will stop syncing.

A checklist for the move

1. 01

   List every app that reads from or writes to XPM.

   Xero’s App Store collection “Apps that connect to Xero Practice Manager” is a good prompt. Include anything a former staff member set up.

2. 02

   Ask each vendor one question in writing.

   “Is your XPM integration on Practice Manager API 3.1, and if not, when?” Keep the answers with your IT records.

3. 03

   Find anything that used Leads, Suppliers or Purchase Orders.

   Xero is retiring those features. Export what you need and decide where it lives now.

4. 04

   Check staff access after you move.

   Partner Hub lets you restrict what staff can see. Review the defaults with whoever owns permissions in your firm.

5. 05

   Walk one client through the new view.

   Open a client group with active jobs, time and a recent invoice, and check each appears where your team expects. Fix the gaps before busy season.

6. 06

   Use Xero’s own material.

   Xero points practices to its interactive Partner Hub demo and the Xero Central courses on the new client and staff views.

How AccountKit works alongside Partner Hub

AccountKit connects to Xero Practice Manager rather than replacing it, and it’s listed in Xero’s collection of apps that connect to XPM. Client information can pass between AccountKit and XPM, and time recorded in AccountKit syncs to XPM. AccountKit’s own workflow jobs stay in AccountKit.

That split is deliberate. XPM, now Practice Management, stays your jobs, time and billing record. AccountKit adds the client groups, tools such as the inter-entity loan tool and client mapping, and the document connections around them. See the full list on the Xero Practice Manager integration page.