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As a result of the invoices coming from message-service@post.xero.com my client is unable to send direct to their main supplier as another one of their suppliers uses that email address and every supplier has to have a unique email address. As a result my client now has the cumbersome job of having to email the invoice/statement to their own email address and forward direct from it. Defeats the purpose of having xero for invoicing. Client not impressed and will likely revert back to Sage. Something xero must in my opinion address ASAP.

@Tim Sneller

What you're suggesting is that xero could have an in-built email client, configurable perhaps using IMAP or POP to send emails through your own email server. That's possible and would work for many customers, you're right.

That said, what most accounting and crm software does is a little different and It's not as difficult as you might think. Emails for a particular domain don't have to come all from the same server. If they did, applications like Gmail for business and Office 365 wouldn't be able to work.

It's possible to send emails for a domain from any server, provided, the DNS records for that domain allow it. In fact, that's how email is always set up these days, there's nothing unusual about it. Without being too technical, you'll see terms like SPF, DKIM and DMARC referring to the settings that need to be put in place in your domain's DNS record.

As others have said, it's not in the least bit dodgy, fake or even unusual, it's just basic email setup. I get that some people might not be comfortable, but there are step-by-step guides on the internet to do this and as a last resort, folks who really can't manage it can use the existing workflow.

Very disappointing this hasn't be done yet. With so many emails going out from Xero they may get overlooked or be unrecognised by new customers and or caught in spam. (Xero even this acknowledge this see https://central.xero.com/s/article/Contact-not-receiving-an-email-sent-through-Xero).

I am an email hosting company and email hosting expert.
Xero have two options. Yes, they could do some programming work to facilitate their servers connecting via OAuth2 to either smtp.gmail.com or smtp.outlook.com. However, it is possible for them to send out emails for accounts@customerdomain.com from their own email servers, *without* causing a problem with Google and other provider flagging it as SPAM. This is done by the insertion of the correct SPF and DKIM entries into the DNS control panel of the customer's domain name (eg at GoDaddy, or wherever else the domain name in question is registered). Once this is done, Xero's SMTP servers will be able to send out perfectly kosher emails with the right SMTP headers so as not to be flagged as spam.

Plus in any event, lots of our outgoing invoices and statements are ALREADY being flagged as spam right now, because of Xero's inaction and inattentiveness to this topic. We do not need Xero to deliver a perfect solution in terms of email deliverability - that's not possible anyway. We only need them to improve deliverability of outgoing emails substantially, which it is absolutely within their remit and gift to do, they're just choosing not to.

"If Xero allowed us to effectively SPOOF the FROM address, many recipient email servers, such as Google, would mark it as SPAM, because the headers do not look correct. This might well be worse than the current situation."

this absolutely *would* be worse. About 30% of our invoices are filtered to spam as it is. Add in a spoofed reply-to or From address, and it gets worse.

What Xero needs to do here is not hard. It's a very simple thing to set up, and it's how it's done in, for example, Quickbooks. We used Quickbooks desktop for 20 years, and for the past 15 or so, we had all outgoing emails sent from our mail server.

That is not how it works at all Tim. Anybody can update their email domains "SPF" record to allow any server to send....

I believe that If the email message was actually sent using XERO's email server, then it should use an email address ending in @???.xero.com. In order to send from your own email address, it needs to be sent from your OWN email server/service. It is ABSOLUTELY possible to do this, but will require some development work from Xero. You would need to be able to configure your own email server's address, port, username and password. Xero could then send using YOUR server, and all the headers etc would be correct.

If Xero allowed us to effectively SPOOF the FROM address, many recipient email servers, such as Google, would mark it as SPAM, because the headers do not look correct. This might well be worse than the current situation.

Its not a "fake" email address.

As an IT provider nearly all of our clients use multiple systems to send from their email domain :) Its very normal and not hard to do at all.

You can currently set your own reply-to address, as this is not checked by an email server when sending a message. Go to https://go.xero.com/Settings/Email/ to configure this. Then, when someone repies to an email, it does go to YOU and not to a black hole at Xero. BEWARE THOUGH, once you have set an email address and a NAME, it is difficult, if not impossible, to change the name on THAT email address - SO CHOOSE CAREFULLY...

I get that it is difficult to allow email to be sent out from Xero's system with what would effectively be a fake FROM email address, especially with increases in message security on many email servers around the world, to prevent spam. However, at the very least, as an interim measure, Xero need to allow us to specify an email address such as "company-name@post.xero.com.
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The proper solution would be to allow us to configure our own email service, address, and password within the Admin settings. Then emails would be sent out from our NORMAL email servers. Many smaller companies might not know how to set this up, so the current system could be the default, but ADVANCED users could add their own message service settings.

However, if messages failed to be sent, it would be down to individual companies to fix it, probably without assistance of Xero support. HOWEVER, I have seen such options give the support company an excuse for email failing, and just blaming the user.

Absolutely mental that this isn't possible.

Everyone marks @post.xero.com as spam.

We just had a response back from a client as to why an invoice of 15% of our years revenue was delayed, apparently it went to their junk. The bank overdraft fees on this one are significant.

Really weighing up whether we can continue with Xero without being able to send emails from our domain on automated invoices. It is a lot of hassle to move, but the alternative is starting to look worse...

Such a simple thing to fix...

This Xero Mail issue continues to be of critical importance to my business and it seems the same for many users - leading to lost communication, invoices astray, waste of time, and inefficiency - Can the Xero Team please respond with an immediate plan that reflects a solution.

This has been ongoing for nearly 10 years - it is a waste of everyone's time to pose an idea and then completely ignore the responses from customers. And yet I still feel I need to post in the hope something will change.......

I'm beginning to be reminded about Blackberry, at one time the worlds most dominant smartphone manufacturer. Questions had been raised for the first time about their product's security, and they just refused to even discuss them, even to the extent of one of their CEOs walking out of a media interview when questions were raised, rather than address what he felt was a hostile and stupid question. And where is Blackberry today? Or Kodak?

C'mon guys, this is a basic thing even for Startups to set up for their paying users, get onto Mailgun or Sendgrid and get this configured for your users!

I commented earlier that their marketing BS has nothing to do with the real functionality they provide.
I guess someone has to be scammed, lose tens of thousands, take Xero to court and prove it was their fault (because everyone's invoices are sent from the same address).
Perhaps after that Xero will take this issue seriously.

Spotted on social media

We switched to Xero a few weeks ago. Only sent out a half dozen invoices or so at this point, but so far half of them have been filtered to spam. Most of our customers are large institutions like universities and museums, and they tend to have pretty aggressive spam filtering setups. This needs to be fixed because if we're not getting our invoices to them, we're not getting paid.

I have had a lot of client complaints about the email not coming from a company email address.

This would be great. Will help our clients whitelist emails from us and setup their flows and processes.