Contacts - Show information on one page
The edit contact format has recently been changed and I now have to click through multiple tabs to edit and view contact info. This is much more time consuming. I would like to be able to edit and view all contact info on one page.

Thank you for all your feedback and impressions of the new contacts add/edit screen.
We can ensure you that the team's designs and flows were thoroughly tested with customers prior to release and there were strategic reasons for why things were designed the way they were. Still, sometimes things are picked up through the release of change to a full page like this, and it's been really good to get feedback from our community to help highlight areas of attention and opportunity.
The team have made changes that will have resolved some points raised in feedback here and we’ve noted these below;
- ABN field now sits above the ACN field within Contact details
- Change to the requirements for entry of bank details so you can input data the way you’d prefer (this should have also resolved issues with processing of batch payments)
- All fields of your contact will now trigger in line detail to be shown for error messages
- Flow for Save - When adding or updating contacts you’ll need to make sure all required fields have been filled before you can save, however you can go through all contact tabs before you need to save. Details you enter from one tab to the next, will hold
- Keyboard navigation - when you ‘Tab’ to a field you’ll need to make a selection, however you can do this by simply using the up & down arrows and pressing ‘Enter’ before tabbing to the next
- Invoice/Bills due date is ‘0’ - Entering ‘0’ will ask you to pick a # between 1 - 31, however if you leave the contact Invoice/Bills due date blank, this’ll default to ‘0’ when you Save
- Removal of skype - Skype has been discontinued by Microsoft since mid 2021. We’ve removed this field as part of the new design, due to its low and dwindling usage. You can retrieve details saved in this field from the contact overview page or through an export.
- Most recently we shifted the Contact Account Number field to sit within Contact details, beneath the Contact Name
A few ideas have also been raised and we’ve shared links where you can join, support and follow in each. We know there are more ways our community would like to see contacts evolve and recent work is a stepping stone toward achieving some of these.
- Xero Blue | Global Search - Search Contacts by address and phone number
- Contacts - Allow duplicate contact names
- Contact - Business Number (ABN) verification check
We appreciate the interest in a one screen approach and reasons for this here. When considering the old design - Previously the contact field was huge (75 fields) and involved a lot of scrolling.
With the new we’ve organised related info on the same page, and customers have told us they found the new design cleaner and easier to navigate.
There’s no immediate change planned for this idea at present, but we’re continuing to monitor and take in feedback about the Contacts add and edit screen on the idea here.
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Martina Ford commented
might be worth it for people to comment on there? They don't seem to listen to any comments
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Stephanie Leito commented
@Bianca I noticed, none of the updates have ever made me feel as if it made my time on Xero any better, now they have a new import statement update, which nobody asked for since the importing of statements is perfectly fine, and even have the guts to ask us for feedback as if they actually do anything with it..........
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Martina Ford commented
Xero also doesn't submit straight to Smartpension. We have to manually upload everything
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Martina Ford commented
Hi Bianca.. Sage had that function years ago. We only changed to Xero on recommendation of our accountant. The accounts package is not too bad apart from not being able to get reports easily. Payroll I find pretty useless as multiple things to make life easy aren't there: ie, working week pattern, 0-hours, average wage. I was asked to create a report showing wage/ni/tax/pension etc for a certain time period and it's not available
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Bianca Davitt commented
I've been waiting almost 10 years for a small tick box that I could manually tick if I decide to put a customer ON STOP. According to Xero, there is no need for an ON STOP function in an accounts program, and they're still refusing to consider the idea.
So, I would not hold your breath for getting anything done by Xero.... ever.... that would actually make the platform better. They just seem to enjoy making it worse.
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Peter Riddell commented
Thanks Martina. We're UK-based too. I wasn't aware of this so will bring it up with our accountants who also administer our Xero subscription.
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Martina Ford commented
Hi Peter. I'm in the UK and the legal requirement to calculate 52 week average wage for holidays is missing. We all have to work this out manually which is a lot of hassle and leads to errors. Myself and others have asked multiple times and it just doesn't get added. 52 weeks average became legal requirement last April and before that it was 12 weeks. Nothing has been done.
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Peter Riddell commented
Hi Martina
What legal requirements are you missing? What country are you in? I think we have everything we need in the UK other than a proforma template for which we've come up with a workaround. -
Martina Ford commented
Xero doesn’t seem to be interested in what users want and need as well as some legal requirements still not applied to software after years of asking. Am seriously thinking of moving to another software
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Peter Riddell commented
It might be useful and assuage people's concerns if Xero shared, in Kelly's words, the "strategic reasons for why things were designed the way they were". Everyone's realistic enough to know that no platform is going to be everything to everybody, but the new set-up is very clunky compared to the single page view. There's a lot of emphasis on scrolling a single page being a bad thing. I much prefer scrolling to clicking from page to page. My guess is that Xero's main emphasis is on listening to App developers rather than users. Xero - comments please.
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Soonam Hwang commented
@Kelly I expected that you would respond in that manner. It appears that you will continue to monitor complaints without taking any action for an extended period of time, until individuals become disheartened and resign themselves to accepting the unalterable situation. This has been a recurrent issue in previous feedback boards.
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Emma (Accounts) Rosenblatt commented
The Admin response is just them telling us they aren't changing it because they believe the change they have made is the best one even though we are all complaining....guess they know more than us lol
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Soonam Hwang commented
@Paul This clearly shows how Xero deceive their small size users, especially NZ users. There was a complaint regarding reference field issue in batch payment to both countries for many many years and AU Xero has been updated several years ago, but here in NZ, Xero dismissed the complaint with ridiculous excuse as insufficient needs.
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Paul-John Mudie commented
Xero needs to engage more actively with the forum users otherwise it seems we're all wasting our time. This is the most highly voted topic and yet there's only one Admin response that is ~ 6 months old.
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Martena Malone commented
In other words. your changes are justified with your team and no options to stay with original system no reasoning or no alternative . seems unfair
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Peter Riddell commented
A lot of scrolling on one screen now replaced by a lot of clicking between screens. Would be nice to think that the addresses have been split out in preparation for multiple delivery addresses being added (ever the optimist).
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Zak Labanca commented
Yes, the take away from this (and every other idea on this forum) is that Xero couldn't care less about their user base - especially not the ones that take the time of day to give them constructive feedback.
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Will Broome commented
Try about 5 years later for a simple telephone number merge field for contacts when you create a "Purchase order".
You're absolutely right with the "but Xero don't care about their users, just the focus group who arent daily users... "
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Stephanie Leito commented
7 months later and still hate it every time I need to create a new customer...but Xero don't care about their users, just the focus group who arent daily users...
And yet the option to duplicate a customer has never crossed their minds, which is a tool I'm sure most users really need -
Bianca Davitt commented
I agree Chris - I consider the payment terms of a customer to be in the "Financial details" tab, but for some reason it's in the "sales default" tab. It gets me every time..... EVERY TIME! :-(