For some of us, “Jax” will forever mean Jackson Briggs from Mortal Kombat, the game we played in our adolescence yet managed not to go out and kill anyone afterwards.
Today, however, JAX means ‘Just Ask Xero’, an AI chat tool that Xero is rolling out in beta. Right now, it has a simple star icon. Personally, I think their marketing team has missed a trick by not using a Jackson Briggs headshot as the avatar…
Xero’s interface is already intuitive for non-accountants, but JAX aims to make things even easier. The vision? One day, you’ll be able to ask things such as, ‘What was the profitability of my Canterbury office last quarter?’ and the answer pops up.
For now, its capabilities are more limited:
✅ Creating and editing draft invoices & quotes
✅ Adding line items
✅ Checking invoice statuses
✅ Identifying unpaid invoices
I tested JAX to see how useful he really is:
🔹 Finding an Invoice: JAX struggled with shorthand. He couldn’t find invoice 2178 until I used the full ‘INV-2178’ format.
🔹 Customer Search: He didn’t recognise a customer by their acronym, only by their near-full name, even when the acronym is in the reference field.
🔹 Creating an Invoice: I asked JAX to ‘create an invoice for £1,000 time spent testing JAX on your behalf.’ It worked. JAX created an invoice with that exact wording, including the lowercase t for “Time.”
🔹 Editing a Line Item: I asked JAX, “Make that a capital T.” That was almost successful. It remembered the previous text, so he created a new line item starting with ‘Time spent’. However, he made it as a duplicate line item, meaning I now had a £2,000 invoice.
🔹 Adding a P x Q Item: Success! JAX correctly added ‘Disbursements – Mileage 154 @ £0.45’ by populating the separate price and quantity fields.
🔹 Generating Reports: Success – I asked for the top 5 overdue invoices 90+ days. He delivered, complete with clickable links.
🔹 Exporting that report to CSV: He replied that it’s ‘Beyond my current capabilities.’
Final Verdict – As at 24 March 2025?
JAX has huge potential but isn’t quite a game-changer yet. I felt I could have done the tasks faster directly in Xero than by typing them into JAX. But then, I do know the different menu tabs inside out.
You cannot fight destiny, so I am sure Xero will crush this out in no time. For now, my conclusion and request to Xero is, Finish Him!