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I agree with Leandro, but it's not even large companies. Even small companies have to import via csv.
Xero used to be customer focused, now they are profit focused.
Case in point - Xero gets revenue from payment services, so it plasters the invoice interface with ads for payment services. We will never use this, but you can't turn it off. It doesn't belong on the invoices interface, setting up payment services is a global thing, it belongs in "settings" (and it is there, but also on the invoicing page)
We already pay a monthly fee for the system, now we have to put up with non-skipable advertising. They are also removing other features with the soon-to-be-mandatory "New" invoicing. Its all a downhill slide of enshitification.

Xero needs to implement lots of features, they still are with a small company mindset, Xero is no longer for small companies, but they do not deliver what big companies need. Everything is getting difficult with Xero when you scale up... My team was okay to manually type sales invoices, but now, we need to import sales invoices, and the numbering is getting a huge hit... We again have to control invoice number outside Xero...

but lets be realist here - reported in 2013, its had no movement for more than a decade.

Accountants have passed away waiting for this feature, but now that "New" invoicing is about to be forced on the users, its become even more important.
The reason is that, while there was a work around in Classic invoicing, New invoicing has NO WAY FOR AN IMPORTED INVOICE TO GET THE NEXT SEQUENTIAL NUMBER other than the user looking up the last number, checking that no other user has saved an invoice since the check, and typing that in. What a stupid workflow to have to follow, when Classic invoicing did this for you just by deleting the temporary/random invoice number that the import came with, and clicking save.
As the UK users will point out, having sequential invoice numbers is a LEGAL requirement in some countries. I hope users find this to be the straw that causes them to ditch Xero, because bug reports and feature requests have been totally ineffective.

This feature has been a part of Classic invoicing and is essential to make invoicing consistent and efficient for our business. We import up to 40 invoices a week from external software as well as invoice directly from Xero. Once we are forced to use new invoicing, invoice numbers will need to be worked out and added manually to each imported invoice. Invoicing will no longer be a smooth and easy process, it will become inefficient and tedious. Please add this feature to new invoicing or allow us to continue with Classic invoicing.

Wave Accounting does this for free. The way they do it is if the client name is the same on consecutive rows, the additional row gets onto the same invoice.

The fact this is missing in the new invoice module is harmful to us. Please fix it.

It is difficult to understand why Xero has lost all of their leading edge functionality in the new invoice module. Legal requirements require sequential invoice numbers, a basic function of an accounting system.

Xero should give the user the choice whether to remain with the classic invoicing system, which is clear, concise and usable. We will need to look at changing systems if this is not made a priority.

WOW - Has this really not been implimented yet! Come On Xero, thats such a simple ask!

We have our own invoicing system The assigned invoicing keeps overriding our system. VERY ANNOYING
Is there some way I can turn it off

This functionality used to work fine on Classic invoicing but has not been carried across to the new invoicing module which is being mandated from 1st September 2024. We import our invoices from our sales system then in the classic system simply the sales order number from the Invoice number field and Xero adds the next system invoice number. Simple and efficient. Not so on the New Invoicing module - you can't delete a prepopulated invoice number and get Xero to put the next system invoice number in !

I agree with the other comments on this forum - I have raised the issue with Xero Helpdesk and been referred here - which is disappointing as historically I don't find Xero makes much reference to the ideas forum.

I have reminded Xero that it is a legal requirement in the UK for VAT invoices to be sequentially numbered (with no gaps in the sequence) - hence the functionality provided in classic invoicing.

I don't accept that a manual system of self-maintaining invoice numbers or a workaround with a plug in like Zapier (at cost) is acceptable for such basic functionality.

Please Xero - don't go backwards - reinstate system invoice numbering on the new invoice module.

It is insane to me that Xero does not automatically generate invoice numbers from an invoice upload. There is so much room for error having to manually enter in invoice numbers - and the need to stop anyone else from generating invoices while you are doing so. Incredibly inefficient!

This is absolutely critical to our business. We import the invoices from csv files and the invoice number has no meaning to us other than organising it.
PLEASE just autofill with the next available number. The lack of this functionality will have MASSIVE implications to our business on costs and admin time.

This is critical for our business as I found it is so time consuming entering invoice number in the template

The invoice number is compulsory on the import sheet unfortunately, the import upload will fail without an entry. Interesting that zapier auto populates them though, I'll look into that thanks!

If the invoice number is empty in the import sheet, it should just be auto-filled. I use zapier to import hundreds of invoices every month and xero is able to auto-fill invoice numbers for the automated imports, so it has the capacity

It's just a bad user experience to go and create a new blank invoice, copy paste that invoice number, then delete that blank invoice.

Respectfully, this should be default behaviour.

I also want this feature, any updates?

This would be amazing and save a lot of time.

This seems to be such an important feature - I was shocked to find out this was not already developed.

Yes, please, this would seem to be basic.

Instead, we have to make up invoice numbers and hope they don't conflict.