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Similar to what everyone else is saying below, a second reference field is important and it is already available on the sales invoice templates, why not replicate the same on the billing template?
I can also see it appears on the bills to pay, where both fields are currently populated by the invoice number.

Can we please have this added immediately, we need to have a separate field to put the invoice number and a separate field to put a reference number. I don't know why this is not available it would be so much easier.

We'd find this feature extremely useful too. Purchase orders are raised in our inventory system (Fishbowl) then the integration pushes them across to Xero once the bill is received.

Our work around for this currently is to manually append a 'space dash space' followed by our purchase order number after the invoice number when entering the into the inventory system. The issue with this is that one needs to remember to do this step.

I wish for exactly this, it is very important to me.

When you export data, ie Bills awaiting payment, the excel does show a reference field (like in invoices) but this is blank and no way to edit - Xero should enable us to utilise this. expenses stay at the top and clutter my screen - I would like to reference these once paid.

Its vital to have this feature on top of the existing invoice number. Will save tons of time in reconciling data recorded on the other end. Definitely need two reference point on billing side.

This feature is extremely important. Can't believe this is not even there in the first place. We need this for cross referencing data from another system. This should be available for Invoices, Bills and manual journal. We need two reference points.

One reference or number field should be for entering the Creditor's invoice number, and there should be an additional reference or memo field for entering your own reference or note. This would enable users to see important information in summary screens, and to search by a different field. For example, one insurance broker might invoice us for several different insurance types, but all are allocated to the same GL account. It would be extremely useful to search by insurance type, or at least see it listed on the summary screen when searching by Contact.

... just to add, one of the great features about Xero is how it syncs with so many other systems. So having the ability to reference a sales order number on our sales invoices, and a purchase order number on our bills, generated on a separate system, is really critical if any kind of audit trail is to be maintained. We have it for sales, just need to do the same for purchases.
Thanks team!

Indeed - I import bills from another system and each has a unique PO number. I only have the option to use this for the bill reference to enter the supplier invoice number - not both. This is in contrast to the invoice screen. I need to enter both PO & supplier invoice numbers or I cannot reconcile them!