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This is GLORIOUS!

In the continued absence of any response from Xero, its most-requested feature thread has evolved into a place for customers to compare COMPETING software, discuss migration regrets and recommend paying independent developers to build the basic functionality Xero has spent twelve years “developing.”

Congratulations, Xero.

You may not have delivered multiple addresses, but you have successfully created a customer-led software comparison and migration advisory service directly on your own website.

An extraordinary product strategy: ignore customers so completely that they begin helping one another leave.

Kelly, any update - or should we continue discussing alternatives amongst ourselves?

We used Sage for 30 odd years and it was a good solution. The challenge we found and it could be a legacy issue was that the on premise version syncing with the Cloud/Sage Drive just started causing us problems and data getting out of sync. It wasn't true "cloud". The other reason is we've implemented a quoting tool which didn't integrate with Sage easily and it did with Xero.

Sage 50 full cloud is on the way I am told but we couldn't wait. In hindsight maybe we should have and we have paid for a developer to create an API integration to the SITC quote solution we are rolling out.

We underestimated functionality or the lack of it should I say in Xero.

I think Kelly Munro is actually Jane Doe and is just a corporate placeholder. I am interested in the comments on Sage50 as I was told by a guy at a dinner party last week it was really good. As our business grows, I am getting more tempted to move away from Xero and pop over to Sage50. Paul Lyons - why did you move to Xero please? What do you not like about Sage50? I know it is more expensive but what else please?

A/R A/P, you've obviously suffered pain longer than us... We migrated from Sage 50 recently. Okay, we had mostly on prem with an unreliable cloud sync. However, all is forgiven Sage!

Sage is so much more capable than Xero, multiple customer delivery addresses, you can part invoice and allocate deliveries easily. Dispute invoices easily. Easier reporting. (could be my lack of Xero knoledge)

If I had the time, and acknowledged there could be IP issues with features. I could make Xero absolutely amazing.

No disrespect to hairdressers, independent retail shops and all small amazing businesses that keep our economy thriving. Xero is for that industry.

As a business owner I take responsibility. Stuck with Xero for now, not doing a finance migration again any time soon!

Xero, Kelly, just get the quote and invoice delivery addresses sorted, you just have to have the option of multiple addresses and to display on the document. It's basic as ABC, 123...

Paul, surely someone at Xero can provide an estimate.

A product manager. A delivery lead. A developer. An intern who once walked past the development department carrying a sandwich.

Someone.

Steve has also identified the particularly magnificent part of this twelve-year engineering saga:

XERO ALREADY ALLOWS USERS TO SELECT OR ENTER A DIFFERENT DELIVERY ADDRESS ON PURCHASE ORDERS.

The functionality exists.

It is alive.

It has been seen in the wild.

Apparently, however, carrying that functionality across the vast and treacherous distance from “Purchase Orders” to “Invoices” requires twelve years, several mysterious “phases” and an unwavering refusal to provide customers with any meaningful information.

At this stage, we are no longer asking Xero to invent multiple addresses.

We are asking Xero to introduce one part of Xero to another part of Xero.

Perhaps the Purchase Order team and the Invoice team could arrange a brief meeting. They could exchange ideas. Compare colourful swooshes. Maybe the Purchase Order team could casually mention:

“By the way, we already solved that.”

But alas, another customer has asked for an update, which means the ancient Xero ritual may now begin:

Silence.

More silence.

“This remains important to us.”

“We are progressing through the next phase.”

Absolutely no explanation of what that means.

Return to Step 1.

See everyone back here in another month, or year or 12 years...

Perhaps by then, invoices and purchase orders will finally have been formally introduced.

Any update, Kelly Munro? I/we understand you cannot commit to a date. However, there must be a PM , software delivery lead or developer that can give us an estimate.

We have a number of clients that have multiple shipping addresses but require invoices to be directed to the formal business name so creating multiple contacts isn't an option.
Currently the only way to deal with this is to change the contact delivery address each and every time an invoice is produced.

Having the ability to choose from a list of shipping addresses or being able to enter a one time shipping address would be helpful.

Issuing a Purchase order already has this option so creating the same options on invoicing seems like a relatively easy update.

Thanks Richard. We moved to Xero a couple of years ago. Our previous system had SOP customer delivery addresses. We kept using the Legacy SOP system to generate our sales invoices (to send to Xero). We are moving to Xero for all SOP functions today (so the Legacy SOP system is now having a rest on a virtual machine). We decided a couple of years ago to send a comment line on the sales invoice with the "end user" name (site name) as a work around for no "SOP customer delivery address". We have many customers, so need to specify the "site" name (address not so important). We also use the "Customer order ref" to include the end user name (and an p/o). So, like many people we choose the generate our SOP invoices outside of Xero. However, we are now using Xero for everything. The first repeat invoices are being sent out tomorrow. We are also planning a price increase in Jan 2027 for our repeat invoices (repeat invoice price uplift is another feature not native to Xero). However, we worked with a Xero developer - who has provided a solution for rate uplift for repeat invoices in Xero.

I got totally fed up with waiting and instructed my web developer to build me a very simple order management system.

It basically looks at Xero and shows me all the open invoices/orders on one page along with the status (paid, In progress, Awaiting QC, Being Packed, Packed, Courier Booked etc. I can then tick them accordingly, book the courier and dispatched etc. The important thing is that I have the ability to set a delivery address unique to each individual invoice in this system - AND store it forever. It is completely unique to Xero with this.

Once the invoice has been completed it moves it to a 'shipped' page and I have set automatic emails asking for Trustpilot reviews - which has been very successful.

This also links with my shipping software and so now all the old problems I had have gone away.

I think with AI coming on so quickly - it might be that some of you stop waiting for Xero do do something they have no intension to supporting and create a work around. It's probably a few thousand to build it but VERY well worth it in my opinion.

My system is even better than Xero because I also have an inventory which works well. Each time and order is paid, it allocates the stock and each time I tick as 'picked' it decreases the stock - so our stock takes are even easier. We have even added in labour cost and basic BOM's so we can see what margin we make for each product.

It's pretty much endless what you can do yourself if you can get your head around it.

We now use our order mamagement system daily and only use Xero for quotes and invoices - NEVER for the CRM side.

If you are interested - just look for an HTML developer locally to you as this is what we built it on.

I hope that helps.

Xero vs QBO is a choice between bad and worse. I just left QBO to come to Xero.

Pros to QBO: Parent contacts and subsidiary contacts with different addresses.
Cons to QBO: no centralized visibility on customers because of lacking multi-currency functionality. It means if you bill a customer in multiple currencies you have to create a separate customer account for every customer. Then if you also receive bills from that same entity, you have to create SEPARATE vendor accounts in all the currencies. So, there is NO WAY in QBO to run a report on your total activity per legal entity. You can't even run based on parent company because the subsidiary transactions don't roll up.

Pro to Xero: centralized contact. I can see every transaction that has ever occurred no matter the currency or whether they're acting as supplier or customer.

Con to Xero: complete disregard of multiple locations per contact.

So, if you're deciding Xero vs QBO you will lose something. Both suck. You have to pick what is most important to you.

Have you found that there are things QB don't do that Xero does? Or any other reason to not move?

I've been running a trial version which expires in a few days, comparing with our current system and another with a view of moving. Multiple addresses is a deal breaker for us, we have 1 customer with over 100 branches.

This missing feature has ruled out us using Xero

There arent many other areas that are lacking, but of course there are some. Best to run an AI comparison of features you are looking for, and see what comes out best. In terms of making improvements, they are about the same and very lax in that area - however the US version gets a lot of improvements that then make it here to the UK version.
One thing that QBO have removed, which is frustrating, is the ability to have Word templates for documents, it used to exist, in much the same way as Xero, but the idiots at Intuit removed it.

But does quickbooks lack in other areas? Like other silly quirks. And how willing are they to improve things customers ask for I wonder

Come on @kellymunro, sort out this sh*t, right away!

@rhianydd I hate to say it, but YES! QBO allows you have to clients and subclients, subclients can be treated as projects and they have their own records so you can invoice at both levels. You can also invoice for the client and include all of the subclients, its very flexible indeed. Thats why I hate myself for choosing Xero for this client that now finds they cant achieve basic functionality with this piece of **** platform Xero.

Any idea if QuickBooks is better?

So instead of getting this feature, it now takes me 4 clicks plus a copy-paste to authenticate to log in.

Last week, before the u̶p̶g̶r̶a̶d̶e̶ release, it took one click, authentication included.

But hey, swooshes.

@ibolya totally, 100% agreed.
And the ability to setup schedules to email reports out, something QBO has had for YEARS!!!
And to be able to search History items as an endpoint on the API, insread of having to work through the GUID of the document first. Stupidity at its best.

@A/R maybe if we asked them for the ability to change the colours of the swooshes we could get a quicker response? ;)
All jokes aside, your comment is spot on ... too many valuable and much needed "ideas" on here are just swept aside. Even the UI on Xero reeks of an older application where others are light-years ahead.
Basic functionality is sub-standard to say the least.