Hubdoc doesn’t extract line items — here is the fix
If you push a bill from Hubdoc into Xero and open it, you get the supplier, the date, and the total — but the line items underneath are blank. That is not a configuration you have missed. Hubdoc reads the header of a document, not the detail. Here is what that means and how to get the full line items instead.
What Hubdoc extracts, and what it does not
Hubdoc is the document-capture tool Xero acquired. It fetches bills, receipts, and statements, and it reads the header fields off them — supplier name, invoice date, and the invoice total. What it does not do is break out the line items: the individual rows of what was actually bought, each with its quantity, unit price, and amount. Xero has also said that no further development of Hubdoc is planned, so that gap is not closing on its own.
Why line items matter
A total tells you what you paid. The line items tell you what you paid for — and that is what the rest of your books need:
- Accurate coding: different lines on one bill often belong to different accounts or cost centers.
- Cost of goods and inventory: per-item quantities and prices feed COGS and stock, which a single total cannot.
- Tax detail: line-level tax treatment gets flattened the moment you only keep the total.
- Spend analysis: you cannot see what you buy most if every bill collapses to one number.
With header-only capture, someone still opens the original document and types the lines in by hand — which is the manual entry the tool was supposed to remove.
Docusift extracts the full line items — and still pushes to Xero
Docusift reads the same bills and receipts and returns the complete line items: every row with its description, quantity, unit price, and amount, plus the header fields and tax — each with a per-field confidence score. Then it pushes the structured result straight to Xero (and to QuickBooks), so you keep the destination you already use and gain the detail Hubdoc leaves out.
- Upload the bill or receipt, or forward it to your workspace inbox.
- Docusift extracts header fields and full line items, tying each amount to its description.
- Review anything flagged low-confidence — the rest is ready.
- Push to Xero or QuickBooks as a fully itemized bill.
For the full side-by-side, see Docusift vs Hubdoc.