Auto-publish lets William publish documents to Xero or QuickBooks autonomously — when it's confident about its accuracy. When it isn't, William asks for help by flagging the document for your review, just like a good team member.
The result: most documents flow through without your input. Manual review becomes the exception, not the rule — you step in only when William actually needs you.
How auto-publish works
William's auto-publish is conservative by design — it only takes action when it's absolutely sure publishing is the right thing to do.
Every document in your Inbox has to pass these checks first — whether William found it in email or you uploaded it from desktop, mobile, WhatsApp, or forwarded email:
It's an invoice or receipt — William never auto-publishes supplier statements, sales invoices, or credit notes.
Existing supplier — William never publishes documents from new suppliers.
No duplicates — William checks the document isn't already in Apron, Xero, or QuickBooks.
All required fields are filled and the math checks out (total = subtotal + tax).
William double-checks itself — every field is extracted twice. If the two passes disagree on anything, the document is held for review.
A good track record — William has processed similar documents for this company before, without recent corrections to the category, tax type, or other fields.
Otherwise, the document stays in your Inbox with a "Needs review" flag, and the publish-reasoning banner explains what made William pause.
Choose what William auto-publishes
Use guidance to tell William which documents to auto-publish and which to leave for your review. Write it in plain language, and type @ to select a supplier. For example:
“Auto-publish everything from @Uber”
“Never auto-publish anything from @Amazon”
“Never auto-publish anything over £5,000”
William still runs every check above, so a document that doesn’t pass one of them stays in your Inbox for review, even if your guidance says to publish. Find out more in our article: Teach William about your policies.
Auto-publish without William
Contact rules are separate from William AI, so you can use them even if you don’t use William. Set up supplier rules to automatically publish documents from chosen suppliers. Your contact and supplier rules always take priority over the William AI rules. Find out more in our article: Create contact and supplier rules.
Turn on auto-publish
Auto-publish is off by default. To turn it on:
Open the William AI tab.
Go to Overview and switch Autopublish on.
What's next
Track William's decisions and the reasoning behind them — see exactly what William has auto-published, and the reasoning behind every call.
Teach William about your policies — write rules and guidance to shape what William handles confidently.
Understand email search — see how William finds missing receipts in inboxes, and how to connect Gmail or Outlook.
Meet William, your AI bookkeeping agent — back to the overview.