We evaluated the performance of the automated body fluid mode of the Sysmex XE-5000 series automated haematology analyzer and compared the performance of the automated method for obtaining white blood cell (WBC), red blood cell (RBC) counts and WBC differential counts with microscopic method. One hundred and seventy-four samples were analysed: 81 ascitic fluid, 32 cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), 26 pleural fluid (PF), 18 synovial fluid (SF), 13 peritoneal fluid (PeF) and 4 other types. The agreement between the automated method and the manual reference showed high correlation, with Pearson correlation coefficients greater than 0.9 for all types of body fluids. We also demonstrate that the automated body fluid analysis on the XE-5000 is an acceptable alternative to the microscopic reference method as far as ascitic fluid, peritoneal dialysis fluid, SF or PF are concerned. Conversely, results for body fluid samples from oncology patients with leukaemia or tumours showed significant differences between both methods, as XE-5000 counted blast cells and neoplastic cells in mononuclear cell count. XE-5000 could represent an attractive method for the automated analysis of WBC, RBC, mononuclear cell count (MNC) and polymorphonuclear (PMN) cells of most body fluids. However, CSFs from patients with leukaemia or lymphoma should be processed with the microscopic reference method in order to detect abnormal leukaemic cells.