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So just an update here: I just received 4 emails that came from post.xero.com that look like phishing attempts. One invoice, one statement, two thank yous for paying the invoice. None of these are invoices for a vendor we work with or have heard of, and we never paid anything.

This is why it's important - for customer trust - to have the emails coming from the company that's billing the client, NOT from Xero. These looked reasonably legit and the first thing I look at when I get an email that doesn't smell right is the return address. Now you have phishing emails using the server that Xero uses for legit emails. That's just great.

I've used Zoho products before and my experience was great at first then customer service became a nightmare, and prices increased a lot, and development stopped listening and negotiations of pricing became difficult. Unfortunately, this is not on a Zoho or any other application. Which is why I go with Customer Service as a high number is calculating what products I refer and use. I was more upset than people on any of the Xero boards. Also, Xero is just getting started in the US compared to Europe. It is much bigger platform there vs here and so much better than QuickBooks even with the things it needs to develop.

I do agree we should have the option to use our own domains as a way to send out invoices, quotes, etc..

It should be able to be implemented from knowing software dev. Just have us user set Cname and txt to verify the domain so that liability is off Xero's hands.

> As using SMTP should not be enabled or any other method as it is not secure and the liability of everyone increases.

As an additional note that might help other companies, we have done a workaround as follows:

> When the invoice is being sent, we make sure is "Send me a copy" option is enabled. Since our organization uses Microsoft 365 for business as an email service, we have created an automation using "power automate" to set up automated resend from shared "Sales@" email every time "@post.xero.com" with another filtered email is received.
> if you have your IT service provider, you can ask them to help you. If not, request to the post, and I might post detail ways on how to if Xero allows.

>Has anyone got feedback / recommendations they'd like to share?

We're moving to Zoho as soon as the tax season in the US is over.

Funny, I was on vacation in the UK recently and saw a ton of ads on TV for Xero. I can confirm that this appears to be where they're putting their money - into roping in new suckers, not into improving the software. Between this issue, the way they handle ACH payments through Stripe, and the inability to have multiple contacts within a single client, we're done.

Zoho appears to do everything we want, I've been testing it and will get it set up and fully running in parallel with Xero over the next couple weeks, then as soon as our accountant is done with our taxes, we're done with Xero. It's slightly cheaper, gives us a feature that allows us to cancel another subscription (time tracking, which we do through e-hour now), and it looks to be under active development with a responsive support team.

Has anything changed on Xero side (I suspect not, but checking)?

On our side, the costs to invoices being blocked / flagged as spam, etc. is high enough that it'll pay for another solution so we''re now looking into alternatives. Has anyone got feedback / recommendations they'd like to share?
- 3rd party tool that manages invoicing (takes payment / reconciliation uploads results to Xero)
- custom built solution
- Webhook from Xero to download / email from elsewhere (if we do that, likely 1 will be better)
- other?

Thanks

I think this should be really high on the todo list for Xero. It would be great to be able to send email correctly authenticated from our own domain. Most other major companies do this now (look at Shopify etc...).

@hannah G

This capability is NOT complex to implement, pretty much everybody is doing it now - it is VERY VERY easy to setup. Please stop gaslighting us

FEBRUARY 2024 IS COMING

As previously mentioned, Google and Yahoo are intensifying security efforts, requiring all email senders to comply with domain authentication by February 2024. I have just received confirmation that other service providers have begun taking action on the upcoming changes.

We have a MailerLite account that we no longer use, but, importantly, we received an email regarding this matter, which I have attached below. Essentially, they state that we need to configure domain authentication; otherwise, our emails will not be delivered.

Xero, do you still believe it's a good idea to ignore this problem?

This is such a simple thing to do, that I am ASTOUNDED that Xero is taking this approach. The problem is, that IF Google WorkSpace, MS Outlook, Yahoo and OTHERS all start rejecting Xero's emails, then we will have no choice but to move accounting platforms. Moving Mail platforms will not work, as EVERYONE will follow Google and Microsoft's lead, as everyone wants more secure and scam-proof email.

Changing our Accounts System is not something that any of us necessarily WANT to do, but we will have no choice. We have to be CERTAIN that our invoice emails etc can actually be received by our clients. Like it or not, DKIM and DMARC are coming, and if Xero WILL NOT bend, and comply, then maybe it will FOLD.

It now seems clear that Xero either can't or won't do this. Suggest people make other plans. This is the same attitude which lead Blackberry to annihilate themselves, having once been the market leader, in fact, had created the whole product-category of 'smartphone'. Where are Blackberry now? or Kodak?

Hello XERO Community,
It appears XERO has decided not to be compliant with modern email messaging standards when sending emails on behalf of its customers; a customer with clients using Google systems (such as Google Workspace or Google Enterprise) it appears will be unable to receive emails from XERO commencing February 2024.

Another discussion thread with XERO shows the community is not satisfied with XERO's lack of development to support DKIM and DMARC authentication for all domains, noting the ability to "Vote" interest and "How important is this to you?" are now enabled, we encourage all to vote and speak up.
* https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198-for-small-businesses/suggestions/46571656-enable-dkim-to-reduce-sent-emails-from-being-flagg

Here is a good write-up on the evolving email-sending requirement that we found concerning Google's & Yarhoo's shift towards DKIM and DMARC authentication for all domains:
* https://www.valimail.com/blog/the-new-requirements-for-email-delivery-at-gmail/

And here are both Google's & Yahoo's pages on the announcements.
* https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/
* https://blog.postmaster.yahooinc.com/post/730172167494483968/more-secure-less-spam

Microsoft announced similar measures in July 2023 that have already taken effect, so clients with Office 365 will already be having issues receiving invoices from Xero.
* https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/announcing-new-dmarc-policy-handling-defaults-for-enhanced-email/ba-p/3878883

We hope the XERO team will reconsider; we want to keep our services with XERO. If we can not safely send Purchase Orders, Quotes, Invoices and other accounting-related services through XERO using our company email, we must consider alternative platforms to do our accounting.

In good faith :-)

Is there a way when sending email from Xero that the address has an identifier e.g
From: Joe Blog<messaging-service@post.xero.com>
Where Joe Blog Represents the company name and does not need to be @company-name.com.
This will allow us to filter when receiving emails to ensure we can manage phising issues. Myob an other accounting software seem to be able to do this when sending Purcahse orders.

If you've received a survey request from Xero recently, please make sure you highlight this issue when you fill it out. Your input is crucial in exerting pressure for positive change.

I'm also curious if anyone has any ideas on spreading awareness about this matter among a broader community of Xero users. There's a good chance that many of us are facing this issue, and by raising awareness, we can collectively put more pressure on Xero to make this change.

The biggest issue here is that emails go into spam, which is pretty bad when sending something so operationally important. The ability to add SMTP detail would be the perfect solution - or Xero need to work harder to stop their emails being caught by spam filters please.

The spam problem makes it impossible to use any email feature from within Xero, rendering those feature completely valueless, and increasing the admin time for our team.

Thank you for your input Denym. My thoughts are, whilst this is a work around, why would we pay $19 per month on top of the Xero subscription fee?
To be able to send emails from our own company address in Xero should be a standard feature and hopefully will be if we keep the pressure on.
For the time being, I will continue to email the documents to my company email and then on to my customer/supplier etc. from there.

While it doesn't sound like Xero will be implementing a feature like this in the short term, I wanted to add to this thread that Paidnice (https://paidnice.com/) has built this functionality that can solve this need for you (and it wont break the bank either from $19 a month)
- Fully customize sender details so emails like payment reminders, overdue notices, invoices etc appear from @yourcompany.com with your logo, colors and styling.
- Paidnice also attaches the PDF of the original invoice from Xero.
- Add a calendar invite as an attachment, for the invoice due date (including link to the original invoice)
- Automatically add late fees or interest, issued as a new invoice or added to the existing invoice line item.

Hopefully it helps! (Disclaimer: I built Paidnice)

We have implemented for our own internal use. (We built an application that connects through API). We can send invoices, statements and payment receipts from our company domain.

Would anyone be interested in this as a service bolted onto Xero?

Feature set envisioned:
- Send from multiple email accounts on the same domain (i.e., company.com)
- Send invoice
- Send statement
- Send invoice payment receipt (customer paid invoice)
- Send payment notice to vendor with line-item detail in CSV file of payment sent (works great for printed checks with more than 9 lines of detail on check stub)
- Optional email address verification service to minimize bounced messages
- We would tie into your email server/service via security configuration

Thoughts?

If you contact me, please let me know what you would consider a reasonable price for this service in US Dollars.
please contact me at za6kvwr8@duck.com (email address protected)

One wonders whether they've laid off all the staff at Xero who actually know how the underlying service works, and therefore how to improve it?

Well, you have just made a serious error of judgment in my opinion. Why? Because your emails regularly do not ARRIVE at the customer's inbox. They get marked as spam. This suggests Xero is not making efforts to get its email service accredited (DMARC etc). It is a shockingly bad rate of arrival. On one round of checking, 25% of customers did not receive their emails. Setting up SMTP is easy and most modern online services offer this. It is not "rather complex" and since most others offer this and Xero thinks it is rather complex suggests some modernisation is required in management thinking. For now, we have had to move away from email because of these problems.

This seems like a pretty poor excuse. As others have said, this is not a new technical idea, tons of other products do this. Set up the correct SPF and DKIM records and smtp services and you should be able to do it. To say it is too complicated is a pretty lame. If it is too complicated then why is everyone else able to do it?
Should be a standard option. Pretty disappointed that Xero can't handle this.