Xero to suspend AU Tax pre-lodge and prefill on 1 September

Xero will take AU Tax pre-lodge and prefill functions out of Xero Practice Manager for an hour on the morning of Tuesday 1 September 2026, from 4am to 5am AEST. The window is 18:00 to 19:00 UTC on 31 August.

Xero's status entry states that during the window "customers will be unable to use AU Tax pre-lodge and prefill functions in XPM", and that it will post an update once maintenance is complete and access is restored. The notice was published on 18 August at 23:20 UTC, giving roughly a fortnight of warning.

Why this window is well chosen

Pre-lodge and prefill are the functions that pull taxpayer data from the ATO into a return before an agent works on it. Losing them does not stop a practice working, but it stops the specific step that begins a return, so an agent who hits the window mid-task waits rather than working around it.

The 4am to 5am AEST slot is close to the smallest possible imposition on an Australian practice. It is worth saying plainly when a vendor schedules maintenance well, because the more common complaint is the reverse.

The billing window two days earlier

A separate Xero notice, posted six minutes after the first, covers Xero Billing on Sunday 30 August from 6:00am to 6:30am NZST, or 18:00 to 18:30 UTC on 29 August.

During that half hour Xero says the maintenance "may prevent you from purchasing a new subscription or managing your existing subscription", and advises completing subscription changes before or after the window.

This one is narrower than it sounds but catches a specific case: a practice adding a client subscription over a weekend, which is exactly when an advisor is likely to be doing administrative work rather than client work.

What Xero has said

Both entries are scheduled events published in advance on Xero's public status page, not incident reports. Neither gives a reason for the maintenance.

Every detail in this report is taken from those two status entries, linked below. If the record differs, tell us and we will correct it.