Enter your idea

This is a requirement when it comes to accrual-basis accounting and prevents the ability to do any sort of month-end or quarter-end close process, as using the invoice date would backdate transactions into "closed" periods. If the posting date is entered into the invoice date field, then you have incorrect invoice details in Xero that do not match the invoice itself. This is absolutely a critical requirement and I am very surprised this feature does not already or exist, or is even being worked on at the moment.

This is a business critical feature for basic month end closing if you are running a business with accrual accounting as your basis.

This is absolutely vital for business's which have a hard close at the end of every month. Without this feature we have to enter the posting date as the invoice date which means aged payable reports are inaccurate.

As an SME with no bookkeeper, this has recently caused me a few (!) problems.

The current date field has no legend associated with it. I, wrongly, assumed that this must be provided for the invoice date. Well, surely the system knows when the bill was paid and imported to Xero, so why would there be a changeable date field if it wasn't for the invoice date - the 'unknown' missing bit of vital information associated with an invoice!!

I was stunned to discover that it was for the posting date. This has to be fixed, but I see that it was first raised over 2 years ago!

I'm not an accountant, but recording the invoice date is surely accounting 101. Yes, there are lengthy workarounds for this - but this isn't what I would call beautiful business.

@Hannah G and Xero Admin Team,

The why we need this separate field is related with the ability to close each month and don't need to open again when invoices come on a later date. Currently you need to either open again and post with the document date or post it in the current month with the current date and ignore the real date on the invoice/receipt.
The first option is not ideal as all the month reporting will change after posting an invoice. The second option creates confusion as the date used to post is not the real date on the invoice/receipt, it isn't ideal for audit trail.
I have seen the two fields in many other accounting softwares, so I am not 100% sure why Xero does not have it. I will be vary valuable if an Accountant is part of the admin team, because the Accountant will know why this is important and will be able to help the rest of the team understand.

Thanks in advance
Adriana

This would make month end go smoother. It should be a standard feature.

This would be an incredibly good resource to have. It should be standard!

Please feel free to get in touch with our team and we will assist in any way we can

The number of comments below show how important this feature is for any accounting function. This is standard across all other accounting software. The lack of this feature is creating additional work arounds for the team and duplication of costs. Please add this functionality as a matter of urgency or we will have to consider looking at alternative providers.

This should be a standard feature...as it is in practically every other accounting system!

The inability to include both the legal invoice date and a separate posting / transaction / accounting date is my biggest frustration with Xero.

This is an essential feature for accrual accounting. I think where the frustration is coming from is that this feels like a very simple change.

The current 'date' field is operating as the 'posting date' and is linked to the lock dates feature.

The additional feature required is a 'document date' field so that if an invoice is dated December but not received until January (very common) it will still be 'posted' into January but with a 'document date' of December - we could then filter by document date to identify expenses captured following the lock period.

The metadata will already be there - if I enter an invoice in January but date it December then somewhere there will be a record of the January entry date.

Possibly muddying the water a little is many users requesting a billing period feature to effectively automate accrual and prepayment journals - whilst this would certainly be a neat feature - I can understand that this would need further development.

The fundamental need here is an extra field to record the invoice date - this will then be used for accurate creditor aging and enable accurate accounting.

We need this so badly but with an amend: not just posted date, but a Billing Period?

Then a quarterly bill could be set as being across three months, and all we would need the system to do is auto-create journals to make the full invoice cost spread across the three months in question.

All I think people are asking for is that the system can create the journal for you on creation of the invoice, to speed up the process. It should be possible to have a journal created to put an invoice cost in a previous period, so then its no different to create 3 or 12 journals.

Could have drop down options for last month, last quarter, this quarter, this year or manually select.

It would mean that the Xero P&L would actually be useful, instead of always wrong.

This would make month end process so much simpler. I would say this basic "feature" as mentioned, a critical feature of any accounting system. Manipulating invoice dates makes the accrual process so much more clunky and only delays financial reporting. As suggested a posting date/period field, and then maybe if you'd like to really compete having the ability to lock these periods by AP/AR/GL

Recently moved from sage to xero but didn't ask if this would be a feature - because of course it would. Am now trying to figure out best way to deal with having invoices posted with incorrect dates as they can't be posted with the actual month of the invoice if received after month end has closed. Just wrong, especially with the VAT implications at quarter end

It can be quite common for an invoice to 'miss' the reporting period as the invoice isn't received by the Accounts Department by month end close off (where we have reporting deadlines and have to close the month for posting a few days after EOM date). As such, in Xero, you can't record the actual invoice date anywhere as that period has been closed, meaning a 'fictitious' invoice date is used (ie. 1st of the next month) to ensure it is posted in an open period. This is misleading and requires you to actually open the invoice to see the real date. Please add a field for this.

You have had this requirement for 2 years and still you are prioritising useless stuff like bulk void features when your standard invoice does not have the basics.
Really Xero all this "beautiful" nonsense is a waste of your developers time.
Look at your competitors and get the basics right.
Xero is clunky and shows its DOS origins

Very important so as we know how old the invoice is, and how long we have had them for if in a dispute

The addition of an accounting period feature on Xero will be an essential enhancement that significantly elevates the usability of the platform. it will allow users to enter invoices dated in the previous month into the current period without changing the invoice date, eliminating the time spent on solving queries from suppliers. Please do something about it!

Any good ERP/Accounting system has this feature. This is infact a critical feature to have as we often get supplier invoices related to previous months after we close that month so we need to have separate fields to include invoice date and posting date. I think Xero should have studied proper ERP/Accounting systems before designing their system so that at least we would have these BASIC critical features.

For Xero Admins, to answer your question why two date fields might be needed: the most common reason for two separate date fields for supplier invoices would be when a supplier invoice is received late, after the month that it relates to has closed. (Perhaps that supplier invoice was expected and an accrual has been raised but potentially not. If an accrual has been raised, it may be for a different amount.)
E.g. The Jan-24 month has been finalised and reports sent out to managers by 10/0224. On 11/02/24, a supplier invoice comes in that is dated 31/01/24.
While that invoice cannot be posted into the closed Jan-24 accounts because it will change the reported numbers, it is still due on the 20th of the month following the invoice date. That is, the 31/01/24 invoice is due on 20/02/24.
Processing the invoice with a Posting Date of Feb-24 will ensure that it is reported in the correct month and won't throw out the Jan-24 accounts. Entering an Invoice Date of 31/01/24 will ensure that the payment date of 20/02/24 appears correctly and would also ensure that the data on the supplier card is correct. Should there be a need to go back to the "Jan-24 invoice" in the future then it can easily be found if the invoice is showing as being dated Jan-24, regardless of when it was posted into the accounts.
I hope this helps.