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The old screen allowed you to update a client’s residential address, postal address and phone numbers all in the one screen. Now you have to click through to three different screens to do this. When you are updating a group which have 6 or 7 clients requiring the same update, what used to take 2 - 3 minutes can now take 10 minutes. So extremely frustrating after using something that worked well previously.

And so much wasted space on your pages (Not just this change, but all the changes that you are making systemwide). You mention above that there was a lot of scrolling and that was why you were making some of the changes. You still have a lot of scrolling to do, but it just doesn't show as much information because of all the white (wasted) space that you keep insisting on putting on each page that you "update for the better"

I would really love to know how many clients and the nature/size of their business that you “thoroughly test” all of these changes with before you force these clunky "improvements???" on to everyone else.

I agree with everyone here, the new feature is much more time consuming and can be easy to forget to fill in certain tabs. A simple way to fix this is by rearranging where things are. For example, instead of having a separate tab for the contacts addresses this should just be in 'Contact Details'.

A 'Notes' section would be a nice addition to this screen as well. It could have its own tab. It would be great if we could select certain notes to pop up when generating either a Bill or Invoice.

Another idea is adding in a second account number option for us to put in our account number with suppliers. We have several contacts who are both a customer and supplier and it is an easy point of reference to find our account numbers.

"Previously the contact field was huge (75 fields) and involved a lot of scrolling."

Feedback from almost everyone here indicates that scrolling is relatively painless compared with "move mouse over to the left, click next tab and continue as you were".

Not related to Contacts but YET ANOTHER NEW CLICK:
I use one profile for several Xero accounts allowing me to switch between companies' accounts without logging out & in.
Previously: Click current company name, select next company from dropdown
Now: Click current company name, click "Change organisation", select next company from dropdown.

This is a terrible step backwards and hard and time consuming to use. If you fell the people need to work in sections, why did you not keep it all on one page and use the headings you have on the left-hand side to scroll to that section. Much fast and better.

The contact form screen layout is not right just does not look good not sure what it is. maybe too spaced out not sure

Xero is very click happy and does not flow well from a data entry perspective. Defiantly needs some improvement, and you need to get advice feedback from better and more relevant sources, unless you are just making that up to save face, because can't really think anyone would consider that change to be an improvement!

Afraid we have to agree that this is, once a gain, a design change for the worse. We do truly wonder who these test customers are that liked this as they sure can't be actual users.
It's always a shame that nowadays changes are made for the change, not for the benefit of the user or for a better performance. What happened to the old way of thinking, if it ain't broken don't fix it?

Changing something for the worse just because you feel you need to change to stay relevant is probably the worst business decision ever yet Xero seems to have joined that way of thinking/group.

Would it be possible to have a 'toggle' in the setups page allowing you to switch from the new, back to the old style contacts page, that way its the best of both worlds and allows those of us who find the old system far more efficient to use it that way and to allow those who find the new functionality added useful to use that. simple setup and not damaging any functionality, no need to create now pages or systems, just a simple mask option over the new.

Contacts we need to be able to flag them for various functional roles

Sales orders
Remittance Advices
Receipts
Purchase Orders etc.

We do not want Sales included in a remittance advice.

Xero was clean and easy to use. Now it’s time consuming and frustrating having to go through several screen to add a contact. All these changes are incredibly time consuming and prone to errors

Are Xero making everything ready to be an App.

I find the multiple screens is just a time waster.

Please go back to single screen.

Were the customers you used to test Advisors. Advisors normally do not use Xero like a real user.

What customers find it easier to navigate multiple screens with no coherent layout I wonder

In response to Xero Admin response 13/9/22, which customers have told you they find the new design cleaner? Clearly not people who use the system day in and day out like an Accounts person, Bookkeeper/BAS Agent or Tax Agent, the people who are using this crazily inefficient user interface frequently. This new layout is a gobsmacking waste of time.

I know I've already commented, but the more I use the new format, the more issues we are having. We are a civil contractor and deal with other civil type businesses, the main email address (especially for billing) more often than not is an admin address, but we deal with "John" or "Jane" and I can only enter their email address, some businesses we deal with multiple people, nope only their email address. We also do a number of general public one-off jobs so much of the business details are irrelevant, but then trying to search for a person we did a job two years ago is almost impossible if you only have their first name and a cell phone number - please consider adding search by phone number as an option. Weirdly as I'm typing I've just heard a radio ad for Xero - perhaps you should put more money into fixing problems for existing customers before attracting more people to annoy!

Ths new ' feature' has made our job far more complex as all customers have special assignments and funded mainly by the government as a secondary contact. The new system has almost tripled the amount of time it takes to create an invoice and is enough for us to have to seriously consider alternative options. A simple select tab allowing toggling between the two options in settings would make much sense even if some of the new feature as not available in the old, as many of us do not use them. Also the sorting by first name is very bad for people based invoicing, meaning we frequently have to scroll through lots of names, and not helped where the invoice name is frequently different to the contact name.
Sounds like it came from a 'focus group' without any real checking of how customers actually use the product, or a management team who want us to all work in a particular way to suit their software.

The whole contacts area is awful.
1. How it sorts your contacts by the first initial of the Contact Name instead of by Last name - that's all ok if all of your contacts are businesses, mine are people.
2. How you have to click here and there to find someone - I should be able to do this from perhaps a billing page, Xero loves making you click!
3. Why can't I click on "Contacts" in the ribbon at the top and be taken to the contacts page without having to click and drag down to "All Contacts" - really?
4. Click on Contacts, scroll down, click on All Contacts, search for the one you are after, (not in alphabetical order so you have to type to search), Click on the name to open a window where you have to click again to edit the information - there has to be an easier way? Then you now have to click, click, click to see the difference tabs of information. Click, click, click, click, click
5. The informality of the names - no titles - I work with Drs, some are Professors, some are Associate Professors. If I don't know them, I think it's a bit rude to say "Hi John" as the placeholder on the invoice email does because their is no title.
6. When you finish editing a contact, it takes you back to the first page of that contact, so you have to click again to search another contact - so much fun when you are editing a group of people! It's just one more unnecessary click for every person you edit!
7. When you are editing a lot of contacts, if you have to move to the next page of contacts (I have extended to 200 contacts per page), once you have edited it, it goes back to the first page.
8. You can't move to the second or following pages of contacts from the top, you have to scroll to the bottom
9. When entering more than one new contact, you have to click on contacts and then click on new contact - shouldn't you be able to click on "Add New" after you've added one?
10. You used to be able to tab from one field to the other when entering a new contact - now for example - Invoice due date > enter number > you can't tab you have to click in the next field and then you have to select from the drop down menu. I used to type 30 > tab > d (and "days after the invoice date" would automatically fill)

The more I have used the new contact entry screen, the less I like it. It has not get better, getting more used to it.

Switching between multiple tabs for info that is copied and pasted from invoices for entering data for just one contact has become more time consuming, and also increases the chances of data entry error.

It used to be much easier

Also, the address fields now default to "Search address in United Kingdom". We are an international company with many clients and suppliers not in the UK. This is ANOTHER click required to just start entering the address.

To add international address details on an existing contact:
Before: Click edit, start typing
Now: Click edit, click Addresses, click Enter address manually, start typing

And even when I do want to "Search address in United Kingdom", the resultant search results are in such a random order (neither alphabetical nor numerical) that I have to scroll through line by line until I find the correct address. See example screenshot attached.

I agree with Jill Fechner, maybe on social they will take this seriously, Sometimes it takes a while to get used to something new, but it's over a month now and this update still annoys me to no end since I am taking way longer now...all the windows pop up for no reason other then to consume your time, website gets error if there is / at the end, it screwed up the address order, so many bugs in this and yet you still won't admit it........
But hey as long as "customers have told us they found the new design cleaner and easier to navigate."
The other 200+ customers don't matter

https://www.facebook.com/Xero.Accounting

Thanks for that Raewyn - interesting read. You can certainly understand the need to future proof the technology, but if Xero are changing things that users find difficult to use, surely they need to go back to the drawing board so to speak and come up with a different plan. There are numerous changes that effect our business, and not for the better - having to save quotes before being able to add notes for instance, loads of additional clicking about - the contact part is just the most annoying bit. Xero, please re-look at the contacts entry and come back with a more user friendly system. You really have us ALL by the short-and-curlies (apologies if that offends some) as we cannot just simply switch to a different product at the drop of a hat - you are aware of this and it comes across as if you don't give a rats about your customers and their needs.