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**FOLLOW-UP: WILL THE NEW AUTOMATED STATEMENTS ADDRESS EXISTING PAYMENT ACCURACY AND FILTERING LIMITATIONS?**

Hi Kelly and the Xero Product Team,

Thank you for the recent update confirming that automated customer statements are progressing through development. This is encouraging news for those of us who have been requesting these improvements for several years.

However, following my comment on 27 October, I would appreciate a direct response regarding whether the existing statement limitations are actually being addressed as part of this development.

**My concern is that automating the current statement functionality without improving its filtering and payment reconciliation capabilities could create further confusion for customers.**

**A HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE:**

A business generates an Outstanding Statement as at 30 September showing three unpaid invoices totalling $1,957.25.

The customer subsequently pays all three invoices in full on 13 October, with those payments correctly recorded in Xero.

On 27 October, the business generates the September statement again. It still displays $1,957.25 as outstanding, despite those invoices having since been paid.

Meanwhile, the customer's actual current outstanding balance is only $711.70, relating to entirely different invoices issued during October.

I fully understand that the historical statement accurately represents the position as at 30 September.

**However, if that statement is generated and emailed on 27 October without acknowledging subsequent payments, the customer could reasonably interpret it as a request to pay invoices they have already settled.**

This creates unnecessary confusion, potential disputes and reputational concerns for businesses simply trying to maintain accurate customer communication.

Alternatively, generating an Outstanding Statement using the current date includes all unpaid invoices, regardless of whether they have reached their agreed payment terms.

**Neither option provides a straightforward way to generate a statement showing ONLY invoices that remain unpaid AND are currently due or overdue.**

For businesses managing hundreds of customers with different payment arrangements, this means manually checking statements against invoice and payment records before sending them.

After five years of performing these checks, I can assure you that this creates considerable and unnecessary administrative work.

**WHAT WE NEED FROM THE NEW DEVELOPMENT:**

1. The ability to display only invoices that remain genuinely unpaid when the statement is generated.

2. The ability to filter invoices according to whether they are currently due or overdue, rather than simply outstanding.

3. Recognition of payments received after a selected historical reporting period, with a clear distinction between historical balances and current amounts payable.

4. Support for different customer payment arrangements, including 7-day, 14-day and 30-day terms.

5. Automated monthly statement scheduling, ideally with customer-specific delivery preferences.

**KELLY, COULD YOU PLEASE CONFIRM WITH THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM:**

- Are these existing filtering and payment reconciliation limitations being addressed in the upcoming release?
- Will the new system allow statements to contain ONLY invoices that are both currently unpaid and due/overdue?
- Will payments received after a historical statement period be clearly recognised when statements are subsequently generated?
- Will automated scheduling accommodate different customer payment terms?
- If these improvements are not included, are they planned for a future release?

**I want to emphasise that I am not requesting changes to historical accounting records. I am requesting clear, accurate and practical statement reporting that distinguishes historical balances from what customers actually need to pay today.**

With over 1,170 votes supporting this Product Idea, I believe the community deserves clarity about what the new development will actually deliver.

I would welcome participating in early testing. However, before registering, I would appreciate confirmation of whether these essential improvements form part of the development scope.

**Simply automating the distribution of existing statements without addressing these limitations risks automating the very problems users have been asking Xero to resolve.**

I respectfully request a specific written response from the Product Team rather than another general acknowledgement that feedback has been passed along.

Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate the progress being made and look forward to understanding whether this release will deliver the practical improvements businesses have been requesting.

Kind regards,

Streamline Auto Parts Pty Ltd

Would be a useful feature to have

Heya Kelly,

Can you please inform me that the main part of this will be fixed being a live as you run the report / customer statement that its outstanding balance will be upto to the exact dates set by the parameters Eg i have about 20 customers actually on account that run on a 30 day policy, & the other customers are technically on account customers but have 7-14 days to pay invoices therefore there is two ways i need to be able to send statements but has been a lengthy task going through over 400 customer accounts per month ensuring i am sending the correct totals that show in the customers section in XERO. Up until potentially now XERO wont account for any payments made to the customers accounts an therefore making the statements un useful and very labor intensive.

I look forward to your response before i sign up thanks

Not available if you use a DOCX template.

"Have you tried to send a customer a statement showing only what they actually need to pay NOW, only to discover that Xero cannot produce it without either including newer invoices that aren’t due or historically showing invoices that have since been paid?"

Absolutely. I have had this happen on mulitple occassions and have had to resort to downloading the invoice and manually attaching it to an email along with an apologetic explanation of why the statement is so f***ed up.

*facepalm*

Has everyone commenting on this read Xero’s comment above and completed their feedback form? The form shows you exactly what they have prepared in this area and gives you the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed solution and highlight any missing or additional features. The fact they appear to have a solution built makes me hope we aren’t far away now but also the more feedback they receive through this form will hopefully make for all round better solution and add weight to getting it added quicker. For me personally, what they have scoped out will work well.

Ideally Xero should support an overdue notice of some sort.
Sending statements as a form of debt collection or as an overdue notice is not ideal.

Most of the time in my business we have customers with multiple overdue invoices, and it is not ideal or user friendly to send these invoices individually, and sending a statement doesn't get across to a customer the urgency of their overdue account.

Having something more formal in place would be more appropriate and could act in a legal capacity of a 1st Due notice.

Other account programs I have worked with over the years have this option.
Sometimes as a letter, but that is easily converted into an email.

the function exists to send automatic invoice reminders. Why are statements so much more difficult?

UPDATE FROM XERO SUPPORT:
Since writing the above, Xero Support has now confirmed that my feedback has been passed to the relevant Xero Product Team, specifically including the relationship between:
• Filtering statements to include only invoices that are currently unpaid AND due/overdue; and
• Automatically scheduling and sending customer statements based on each customer’s settings.
Xero Support has also confirmed that this existing Product Idea is the appropriate place for BOTH requirements to be considered and that my feedback regarding the filtering limitation is directly relevant to the current “In discovery” process.
That is encouraging to hear.
Now is therefore a really important time for everyone affected by this to continue commenting with your real-world examples and requirements.
Hopefully, after all these years, we can help Xero’s Product Team develop the complete solution rather than simply automating the existing statement functionality.
Thank you to Seble from Xero Support for taking the time to understand the issue and pass the feedback through to the appropriate team.

Hi, in response to Streamline Auto Parts:

I understand that your request may be valid for your situation but I have been a bookkeeper and worked in accounting roles for many years and not had a need or requirement to send a statement showing only overdue invoices and excluding current but unpaid invoices. Maybe this is industry specific but a statement format that clearly shows an overdue balance amount to differentiate from the total balance owing and possibly highlight the overdue ones (although this is usually clear from the due dates) is fairly standard and accepted by both customers and suppliers.

For the sake of getting this closer to actually being implemented – if that is even possible given the long time delay from the initial request – having workable options for the statement email templates and scheduling of sending statement emails automatically would be a significant improvement on what we currently have.

If Xero can also work with the statement format to highlight the overdue invoices in some way – bold or italic font, or different colour (this may have already been suggested)– that should be sufficiently clear to a customer what needs to be paid ASAP and the email template can include some appropriate wording. A placeholder option to include the overdue amount in the email would help.

PART 1 OF 3 – IMPORTANT UPDATE: ANOTHER XERO CUSTOMER STATEMENT LIMITATION

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share something I discovered today while manually preparing customer statements, because I believe it is directly relevant to the automated statement functionality that all of us here have been requesting.

After discussing the issue with Xero Support, a Xero Support Specialist has now formally confirmed to me that Xero currently cannot generate a customer-facing Outstanding Statement containing only invoices that are both CURRENTLY UNPAID and CURRENTLY DUE/OVERDUE.

This has been confirmed by Xero as a product limitation.

That might sound surprising, so here is a simple real-world example.

A customer has:

• An older invoice that is unpaid and overdue
• A newer invoice that is unpaid but still within its payment terms
• Some older invoices that have now been paid in full

Naturally, I wanted to send the customer a statement showing only the invoice that actually requires payment.

However:

If I date the Outstanding Statement today, Xero removes the invoices that have been paid, but also includes the newer unpaid invoice that isn’t due yet.

If I use an earlier statement date to exclude that newer invoice, Xero treats the statement as a historical “as at” snapshot and can bring back older invoices that were outstanding at that date but have since been paid in full.

Xero Support has formally confirmed to me:

“Xero does not currently offer a statement filter that combines both of these conditions: The invoice is still unpaid today; and the invoice is due or overdue today.”

This creates a much bigger issue when we consider what the 1,100+ voters on this Product Idea have actually been asking Xero to develop:

AUTOMATED CUSTOMER STATEMENTS.

Simply automating Xero’s existing statement functionality will NOT completely solve the problem.

We could finally get the automated statements we have been requesting for years, only to have Xero automatically emailing customers statements containing invoices that aren’t even due for payment.

Please continue to PART 2 – because I believe the statement filtering and automation need to be developed together.

PART 2 OF 3 – WHAT I BELIEVE XERO ACTUALLY NEEDS TO DEVELOP
Following on from Part 1, I believe Xero needs to address TWO related problems together while automated customer statements are currently marked as IN DISCOVERY.
1. STATEMENT CONTENT
Give us the ability to generate a customer statement containing only invoices that are:
CURRENTLY UNPAID + CURRENTLY DUE/OVERDUE
A statement being used to request overdue payment should not unnecessarily include invoices that have already been paid or invoices that have not yet reached their agreed payment terms.
2. STATEMENT AUTOMATION
Give us a simple customer-level setting similar to the functionality Xero already provides for invoice reminders:
Automatically send statements: YES / NO
Then allow us to configure options such as:
• Weekly / fortnightly / monthly
• A nominated date, such as the 1st of each month
• Send only when there is an outstanding balance
• Send only when invoices are due/overdue
• Always send regardless of balance for customers who require monthly statements for reconciliation
This would allow each customer’s requirements to be configured once.
Then it genuinely becomes:
SET AND FORGET.
For businesses dealing with hundreds or even thousands of customer accounts, manually reviewing accounts, identifying what is actually due, generating statements and emailing them individually creates an enormous amount of repetitive administration.
This is exactly the type of process accounting software should be helping businesses eliminate.
There is also a significant customer-service issue.
Sending customers statements containing invoices they have already paid can make it appear that their payment hasn’t been received or allocated correctly.
Sending a statement intended to chase overdue debt that also contains invoices still within the customer’s agreed payment terms can make it appear that we are requesting payment early.
Neither outcome is professional and neither should be necessary.
The workflow we actually need is incredibly straightforward:
Correct invoices → Correct customers → Correct schedule → Automatically sent.
Please continue to PART 3 – particularly if you’re one of the Xero users who has been waiting years for this functionality.

PART 3 OF 3 – XERO PRODUCT TEAM: PLEASE CONSIDER THESE ISSUES TOGETHER
This Product Idea now has over 1,100 votes and hundreds of comments from Xero users describing the same fundamental problem: businesses are spending significant amounts of time every month manually doing something that should be automated.
There will undoubtedly be many more Xero users experiencing the same problem who have never found, voted on or commented on this Product Idea.
Many comments here also explain that businesses are paying for third-party applications simply to obtain statement functionality they reasonably expected their accounting software to provide.
Now we have another important piece of information.
Xero Support has formally confirmed that the existing Outstanding Statement itself cannot filter for invoices that are BOTH currently unpaid AND currently due/overdue.
That means I strongly believe this limitation needs to form part of the current discovery work around automated statements.
Otherwise, there is a real risk of developing automation around an existing statement process that doesn’t completely meet the accounts receivable requirement.
XERO PRODUCT TEAM – PLEASE CONSIDER STATEMENT FILTERING AND STATEMENT AUTOMATION TOGETHER.
What businesses need is not complicated:
1. Determine which customers receive automatic statements.
2. Determine when those statements are sent.
3. Determine whether they receive all outstanding invoices or only invoices that have actually become due/overdue.
4. Exclude invoices that have subsequently been paid.
5. Automatically generate and send one professional, branded customer statement.
This is especially important now that this Product Idea is marked IN DISCOVERY.
I have personally been raising the need for improved statement automation for years, so I genuinely hope the current discovery process results in functionality that solves the complete problem.
I would also encourage everyone following or voting on this Product Idea to comment if you have experienced the same issue:
Have you tried to send a customer a statement showing only what they actually need to pay NOW, only to discover that Xero cannot produce it without either including newer invoices that aren’t due or historically showing invoices that have since been paid?
If this affects your business, please say so.
The more real-world examples Xero receives while this functionality is in discovery, the harder it becomes to underestimate how important this is to businesses using Xero every day.
After years of requests, hopefully this is the opportunity to finally get it right

I'm already paying Xero a monthly fee - I'm not paying extra for an app to perform a basic function.

Paid Nice has good features but not feasible at min $99pm extra for basic plan just to get automated reminders/statements sent.

Paid Nice has been delivering this service as well as a bunch of other invoice features like SMS reminders, auto calculated early payment discounts & late payment charges for some time - https://www.paidnice.com/

This would be an excellent feature!

We're now at 1145 votes on this issue and still no action from Xero.
Even did the feedback link and no response.

Surely just adding more flexible options to the invoice reminders based on a calendar date - 1st monthly, 15th, weekly - rather than just based on the invoice date so a list of unpaid invoices can be sent would be helpful.

While Xero has many great features, it seems to me that a BASIC functionality would be to automate emailing customer statements each month on a specified day, say the first of the month. Really disappointed that this seems to have been a feature request for quite some time and yet the developers haven't put the time into releasing this capability.

The post by Akshay Singh sounds like Xero have been working on ways in which they can charge extra without providing any of the functionality that should be a basic provision of a cloud based accounting system.

It is interesting and typical to note that this poor excuse for a solution, which has been ignored for years, comes just after they've announced that they are charging us more supposedly on the back of increased functionality that we probably didn't want or need.

Having been a customer for many years it feels like a kick in the teeth.