XBert Type: Standard
Accounting Software: Xero, QuickBooks Online
Country Restriction: All supported countries
Risk Type: Fraud Risk
Business Function: Banking
Overview
This XBert tells you when the bank account details saved against one of your contacts (usually a supplier) have changed since they were last recorded. A changed supplier bank account is a classic payment-fraud signal, so this alert helps you catch an unauthorised change before money is sent to the wrong account.
What it does
XBert keeps a record of the bank account it last held for each of your contacts. On every sync it compares that earlier account against the account currently saved on the contact in your accounting software. If the account number now on file is different from the one previously held, it raises this alert and shows you both the old account and the new account.
The comparison ignores formatting such as spaces and dashes, so a cosmetic tidy-up of the same number will not trigger it. Only a genuine change to the underlying account number is flagged.
How it works
This XBert fires when a contact's current bank account does not match the account previously recorded for that same contact. To keep the alert meaningful, it deliberately ignores the following situations:
A contact that has a bank account recorded for the first time. There is no earlier account to compare against, so adding bank details to a new contact is treated as a first-time recording, not a change.
A contact with no usable account number (blank, or a value with no digits).
Inactive or archived contacts.
A change where the new account now matches one of your payroll employees' accounts. That situation is reported separately, so it is not duplicated here.
A change where the new account is now shared with a genuinely different contact. That case is also reported under its own alert. Importantly, where the shared account belongs to the same business under a slightly different name (for example a trading-name variation), this alert will still correctly surface the change rather than hiding it.
When it does fire, it shows the previous account and the new account side by side so you can quickly see exactly what changed.
Example/Use Case
Sarah is a bookkeeper at a building firm. One afternoon someone with edit access quietly changes the saved bank account for the supplier ACME Plumbing Supplies from the supplier's real account to a personal account. A few days later a bill for $18,500 is approved and paid against ACME's contact record, and the money lands in the wrong account. ACME later chases the firm for non-payment, and the fraud comes to light only after the funds are gone.
With this XBert in place, Sarah is alerted to the changed bank account as soon as it happens. She rings ACME on their known phone number, confirms the new account was never authorised, reverses the change, and stops the payment before it is sent. The same alert also catches honest mistakes, such as a mistyped account number that would otherwise cause a failed or delayed payment.
Accounting software
This XBert runs on Xero and QuickBooks Online. These are the platforms that keep an original snapshot of a contact's bank account, which is what makes a reliable before-and-after comparison possible.
Which countries it supports
All supported countries.
Processes
This alert sits under Banking and is part of your data cleanup and internal-control checks. To resolve it:
Open the affected contact and compare the previous account with the new account shown on the alert.
Verify the new bank account directly with the supplier using a trusted method you already have on file, such as a phone call to a known number. Do not rely on details from a recent email, as those can be spoofed.
In Xero, check the contact's history or activity log to see who made the change and when.
If the change is genuine and authorised, no further action is needed.
If the change is incorrect or suspicious, restore the correct bank account, report the incident internally, and review any payments already made to the wrong account.
Once the account details are confirmed correct, mark the XBert as resolved.