Contacts - Allow multiple addresses for a single contact record
Ability to create and save multiple addresses for a single contact record
Purpose: Allow customers to map customer & supplier details against a single contact record
Hi everyone, we know this remains a highly important request, and we appreciate the volume of detail you’ve shared around billing, delivery and contact management workflows in this idea.
As shared in our last update - our team has been progressing the next phase of work needed to bring this more meaningfully into invoicing.
We know many of you are looking for clearer timing, and while I’m not able to confirm a release date at this stage, I do want to reassure you this remains an active area of work for our product teams.
We’ll continue to return here with further updates as we move through the next stages. Thanks again for your patience and for continuing to share the workflows that make this so important.
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Sue Scott
commented
A/R R/P: well said about all the recent changes that have just complicated the user experience and created nothing useful.
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A/R A/P
commented
I strongly suggest that EVERYONE requesting this feature take ten seconds to open an actual Xero Support case.
Include the link to this nonsensical TWELVE-YEAR-OLD thread and request clear, substantive answers - not another generic response posted here.
Open a one-to-one support case that must be formally logged, individually addressed and held accountable.
Ask Xero:
Is this feature genuinely under active development?
When did development begin?
What work has actually been completed?
What does “progressing to the next phase” mean?
Why has restoring functionality that previously existed taken twelve years?
Is there an anticipated release window?This thread has allowed Xero to issue occasional, non-specific acknowledgements without answering any of those questions.
It is time for each affected customer to open a documented support case and demand (politely) answers.
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A/R A/P
commented
Meanwhile, as customers wait TWELVE YEARS for the ability to assign multiple addresses to one contact, Xero’s development resources have apparently been very busy delivering improvements NOBODY REQUESTED, including:
Changing the invoice calendar from the universally recognized Sunday-to-Saturday display to Monday-to-Sunday - because apparently Xero also needed to reinvent the week.
Leaving the calendar for bills as Sunday-to-Saturday, so users must now remember which version of the week Xero has decided to use depending upon whether they are entering money coming in or money going out.
Replacing the invoice format with a significantly more confusing version AND removing several useful features in the process.
We can no longer save an invoice from Preview using a filename of our choosing. Instead, downloaded invoices are automatically named by invoice number, leaving us with a beautiful, meaningless sea of numbered PDF files that must be renamed manually.
Xero also removed the apparently unreasonable option of simply calling an invoice “Invoice.” Our exciting new choices are:
Tax Invoice - the only remotely appropriate option for an actual invoice requesting payment and including HST.
Pro forma invoice - a preliminary document or estimate, and therefore incorrect.
Commercial invoice - primarily used for goods crossing international borders and customs, and also incorrect.
No title - technically possible, provided we do not care whether customers immediately recognize that the document is an invoice.
THERE WAS NO PROBLEM WITH THE WORD “INVOICE.”
NOBODY WAS CONFUSED BY IT.
NOBODY REQUESTED ITS REMOVAL.
NEVERTHELESS, XERO BOLDLY SOLVED THIS NONEXISTENT PROBLEM FOR US.Adding a prominent “Review and pay” button to Statements of Account - even for businesses that are not configured to accept payments through Xero.
This has successfully confused every customer receiving a statement while providing absolutely no corresponding benefit.
Making cosmetic changes to the homepage layout, ensuring users must repeatedly relearn where everything is without gaining any meaningful new functionality.
But multiple addresses for one contact - the most-requested feature, which previously existed and was removed - must continue its careful twelve-year journey through “the next phase.”
It is reassuring to know that Xero has the resources to reinvent calendars, complicate invoices, eliminate the word “Invoice,” create oceans of indistinguishable PDFs, rearrange the homepage and advertise payment options that do not exist.
Perhaps once every functional part of the platform has been unnecessarily redesigned, someone will have time to restore the feature customers have actually been requesting since 2014.
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Angela Pruitt
commented
They are too busy making all these other changes that no one asked for like changing how the bank cards import so now individuals on the company card have to be done manually as well as no longer playing well with Bill and all the "format" changes that add no real value just create another unnecessary learning curve. I don't use this feature but what is happening with everything else is forcing me to look elsewhere for a better solution that is more geared towards the customers needs.
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A/R A/P
commented
Thank you, Mellissa. Those are excellent questions.
I would also appreciate an update containing actual information - particularly an explanation of what “progressing to the next phase” means in Xero time.
This request has now existed for twelve years.
When it was first submitted, Microsoft Teams did not exist. Microsoft has since conceived it, built it, launched it globally, redesigned it and replaced the original version with an entirely new one.
Yet allowing one Xero contact to have multiple addresses remains, apparently, a feat of engineering roughly equivalent to establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars.
What makes this especially baffling is that Xero previously had this functionality and removed it.
Customers have therefore spent twelve years requesting that Xero restore something it already knew how to do.
This is not an obscure convenience requested by three unusually demanding bookkeepers. It is the most-requested feature, and the current workaround is to edit addresses manually, one transaction at a time, while reflecting upon all the productive things we might otherwise have accomplished with our lives.
Please provide a meaningful update:
What work has actually been completed since February?
What is the “next phase”?
Is this feature genuinely being developed?
If so, is there an anticipated release window - measured in months or years rather than geological eras?After twelve years, “we’ll share more when we can” is no longer an update. It is a Xero tradition of IGNORING THEIR CUSTOMERS' MOST REQUESTED FEATURE.
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Mellissa Matchett
commented
Please give us an update that actually has some detail in it, including:
1. Why it is so hard to put back what was already there and taken away?
2. Why has it taken since February for this to 'progress to the next phase'?
3. This is the top requested feature so why has it been completely ignored?We now have a client that requires over 90 entities to have their addresses changed and we have to do it one by one. Absolutely not good enough!
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A/R A/P
commented
It has now been approximately 12 years since customers first requested the ability to save multiple delivery addresses under a single contact.
Twelve. Years.
This is not an obscure feature required by three companies operating in an underground niche industry.
Construction companies, property managers, contractors, waste companies, couriers, wholesalers and countless other businesses have customers with multiple locations.
The concept is breathtakingly simple:
One customer
Multiple saved delivery or service addresses
Select the correct address when preparing an invoice or quoteThat’s it. Nobody is asking Xero to split the atom.
We would simply like to stop manually typing, copying and storing customer addresses outside the accounting software we pay to use.
Xero already allows an address to be entered on a transaction.
The revolutionary next step would be allowing users to save more than one address under a contact and select the correct one.
Two years ago, Xero advised that this feature was in development.
Apparently, multiple-address technology is significantly more complex than originally anticipated.
Could Xero please provide an actual update on its status?
After 12 years, “Thank you for your feedback” is not an update.
At this point, some of the buildings associated with the original delivery addresses may have been demolished and rebuilt - with entirely new addresses THAT WE STILL CANNOT SAVE.
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Julie Sutton
commented
I think its clear that Xero have no idea how the "real world" works or how accountants operate on a daily basis as highlighted b y so many of these "ideas".
Even getting the data out into Power BI is troublesome with Xero.
And every "improvement" really isn't!We have basically given up with it and will be moving off Xero later this year.
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Bronwen James
commented
We sell to Pick n Pay and to Spar - we have to deliver to stores all over the country and have to invoice to the main distribution center. currently we have to invoice individually and then manually bill to the DC. 100's of stores - every week!
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A/R A/P
commented
Does anyone at Xero understand how construction companies operate?
A single construction company can have dozens of active job sites at any given time. There is one legal billing entity, but every invoice needs the correct site address.
Instead of allowing one customer to have multiple service or delivery locations, Xero makes me manually replace the delivery address every time I create an invoice. That address is then saved as the customer's only delivery address, overwriting the previous one.
Now multiply that by dozens of customers, each with a dozen or more active sites.
That's HOURS of unnecessary MANUAL work EVERY SINGLE WEEK for something that should be a basic customer relationship: one customer, many service locations.
This isn't an edge case. It's how the construction industry operates every day.
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Graham Tottle
commented
A/R A/P - nailed it! Completely agree. To make the situation worse, Xero seem to think it's OK to completely ignore this issue and treat the thousand plus clients that this is badly affecting with complete contempt.
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A/R A/P
commented
This isn't a "multiple addresses" feature request, IT IS A CUSTOMER DATA MODEL PROBLEM!
Xero's customer record currently combines several independent entities into a single object:
Legal Entity
Billing Address
Service/Delivery Address
Invoice Recipients
Project/SiteThose are not the same thing.
A modern customer model would separate them, allowing one legal customer to have one billing address and multiple service locations, each selectable when creating an invoice.
Each service location should also be able to store its own defaults, such as:
Service/Delivery Address
Site Contact
Invoice Email Recipients
Purchase Order defaults
Job or Project referencesFor many businesses, different sites are managed by different project teams. An invoice for Site A needs to be emailed to one group of people, while Site B for the same legal customer goes to a completely different group. Today, users have to manually change recipients every time or maintain cumbersome workarounds.
The irony is that Xero already models one-to-many relationships throughout the platform. The architecture clearly supports parent-child relationships.
So why is one of the most common business relationships - one customer, many service locations - still missing?
The current workaround of creating duplicate contacts isn't a solution. In many industries, invoices must be issued to the customer's exact legal entity name. Modifying that name simply to distinguish locations can result in invoices being rejected.
This isn't asking for a new accounting principle.
It's asking for a customer record that reflects how businesses actually operate.
Please send this to the product and engineering teams instead of directing customers to years-old forum threads asking for the same functionality. This is a fundamental design limitation that creates unnecessary manual work for your customers every single day.
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Richard Fishenden
commented
I spoke to my accountant about this and he did offer this which might help some of you. It won't work for us because we use the Reference field:
A potential workaround could be to rename the reference header in a docx invoice template (to ‘Delivery Address’) and expand the space the reference field uses for each invoice to make this more prominent to avoid confusion, and so larger addresses can fit on invoice documents. This could then be updated on an invoice-by-invoice basis so delivery addresses are shown clearly on invoices, without affecting all other historic delivery records for a specific customer. On the downside, this will eliminate the use of this field for other information. Should you wish to proceed with this method, this is something that I can assist in getting set up for you on templates, as this can be quite fiddly on the docx template.
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Bianca Davitt
commented
Seeing as we were all specifically told that the transition to NEW INVOICING (that no one wanted and removed many features from old invoicing) *had* to happen as it was the only way we would get "multiple addresses for one head office"...... well.....that was obviously an outright lie. Bad form Xero - bad form!
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Sue Scott
commented
Graham, THANK YOU! Since seeing this from Kelly and receiving a direct message from her, I've been sitting here wondering whether I've somehow crossed over into a parallel universe! Thank you for confirming that I'm not going mad!
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Graham Tottle
commented
@SueScott
@KellyMunroeIf true, I find this incredible given the number of posts SPECIFICALLY relating to this topic. I have also received direct messages from Kelly about this, so either she has the wrong end of the stick or there has been some misunderstanding regarding the topic.
Perhaps Kelly would like to advise us all directly on this forum? -
Sue Scott
commented
Richard, thanks very much. I've had a message from Kelly who is now denying that a change to allow multiple customers with the same name has ever been on Xero's radar, which I'm actually finding offensive - and that takes some doing - as there have been various posts from Xero users and updates from Xero over the years - though admittedly very little from Xero. Gaslighting at its best!
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Denis Hodgins
commented
WHEN WILL THIS BE RELEASED, or is Xero only going to be for small SME's and not supply to larger organisations with multiple addresses. Such as Tesco, NHS in the UK.
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Ben Smith
commented
@Kelly Munro
@Paulo DiasExactly my thoughts, especially as "Multiple addresses has been enabled in the back end of contacts" well over 3 years ago?!
Absolutely laughable, I can only imagine how things would end if I treated my customers with the same level of contempt as Xero do their customers.
Beyond a joke...
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Paulo Dias
commented
@Kelly Munro
"multiple addresses requires a complex solution"
How difficult can this be if you already hav it in place with the Purchase Orders?
I am sure you could share the same formulation, coding and safety measures with the quotes and invoices.