Repeating Invoice - bulk update of amounts
We are a subscription based business, so it would be great to be able to bulk update repeating invoice amounts. Either by selecting all the ones we'd like to change or by pushing through new inventory/product/service price changes. At the moment we have to change every single repeating invoice and this takes hours and hours!
Thanks for the feedback and great to hear the use you find in repeat templates in Xero.
While there's no way to bulk update templates atm, you may find updating your templates through export & import of invoices more helps quicken things up?
You could export invoices that have been generated from your template to CSV, update the amounts in the exported file, and then re-import.
This will create 'Draft' invoices in your Xero org from which you can create a Repeat template and then delete the draft. 🙂
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Vincent Wadsworth commented
Anyone know the phone number to call so I could look at chasing this on the phone?
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Nick Fenmor Collins commented
Still no action at all here... Guess it's time to investigate alternative accounting platforms??
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Vincent Wadsworth commented
@Catie Lake
Yes it is. In the grand scheme of complexity that is Xero, with all the marvellous things it does, the "fix" for this is literal child's play.
This is why it is, for me, such a massive annoyance.
The team at Xero have an amazing product that they are deliberately tanking by not knocking these home runs out of the park.
If I were an investor, or rather inclined look at these software companies for where to invest, I would see this a huge red flag. Why would staff choose anything less than excellence? Is it because the company treats them like dirt? Maybe there are labour issues behind the scenes at Xero that we need to be concerned about, and if that's the case then there are definitely security concerns from disgruntled employees. -
Catie Lake commented
There is a way but Xero are not prioritising it. All we need is a tickbox on the invoice item line that asks the site to pull the latest product information from the Products and Services list or leave it as it was when the initial invoice was created. The invoicing page already connects to the database and pulls the item information when you pop the item number in anyway.
I'm now programmer but sure that is a straight-forward update/ignore instruction? No?
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Nick Wilkinson commented
In case it helps with understanding this issue. There is no current accounting API (end point) to allow their own web app to update repeating invoice templates (only retrieve and create). I could be wrong but from what I can see they would need to upgrade their API capabilities in order to develop the feature. https://developer.xero.com/documentation/api/accounting/repeatinginvoices
I'm not a developer so I don't know how anyone else has potentially solved this via 3rd party apps or integrations but at least this is my 5 cents in helping any frustrated customers further understand why it hasn't been created.For Xero accounting partners automations are available in the likes of FYI Elite or Ignition software that can assist with automating repeat invoices from their platforms in lieu of using Xero (including bulk price uplifts).
For Xero business customers (accounting partners included) you could consider using platforms like Zapier or Make.com to drive repeating invoices from a Google Sheet (or similar) i.e. create a worksheet with details in which automated invoices are created in Xero and avoid having to use Xero for these at all. It possibly comes down to how much of a pain the issue is for you. Would anyone be interested in learning how to build your own no-code repeating invoice module and connect to Xero?
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kevin eaton commented
they wont do it because they are in bed with chargebee, who do offer recurring invoices that work properly, but they charge about £250 per month....
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SiteBites Admin commented
Seems pointless to be commenting here since this has been consistently requested on here for over five years and Xero have neither implemented, nor replied on this thread of comments, but....
Cannot believe Xero cannot create a solution to batch updating. Someone in these comments mentioned they had created code to do this. Why Xero can't investigate this I do not know.
Price updates are inevitable for practically every business. To have to do this manually, and not even be able to export a list of repeating templates to keep a record of updates as you go is just ludicrous and archaic. The suggestion above takes longer than updating each reporting invoice individually >:-(
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Paula Jackson commented
This should be such a simple fix. I cannot believe xero continue to ignore this matter. Every time we need to do a price increase we have to update 600 repeating invoices manually. It is also tricky to keep up to date with which invoices you have updated as you cannot even export a list of repeating invoices to check off as you go along!
WHY CAN THIS NOT BE SORTED???????????????????? -
Angie Anderson commented
Please look into getting this changed - it could save clients who use repeating invoices with items so much time!
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Vincent Wadsworth commented
Can you please push this forward, for my part I'm looking at tops 50 changes a year which is an annoying level of work for me.
For companies like the one who requested this 3 years ago and others that I've seen wanting this relatively simple feature it could be the difference between expansion or finding a different software to use like Quickbooks or Sage. -
Dar Zuch commented
One more upvote here. This is critical functionality. We need to be able to update Repeating Invoices via the API.
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Paul Griffin commented
Excellent suggestion. We too would utilise this.
It would be very useful if changes to sell prices in 'Products and Service' are reflected automatically within the repeating invoices.
Presently I have only 200 to do. However, this could easily be a 2 minute job, if this change is implemented. Please consider. -
Bee Hesketh commented
Yet another area of repeating invoices where Xero's only solution is to perform it manually. Great.
I don't think there is a single area of our billing processes which we are now able to automate with Xero, due to issues/bugs (so called 'Product Ideas').
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Louis de Kock commented
Hi Nigel Boot
Xero is not going to implement this change, it's been asked for for more than 5 years already, they do not even respond anymore.
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Nigel Boot commented
We are an IT Consultancy, who have thousands of recurring invoices for the Microsoft 365 subscriptions, Anti-virus subscriptions etc. When the price of these change and we update the price in the Product in Xero, it is GOB SMACKING that Xero still are unable to let us easily update all the related repeating invoices. PLEASE GET THIS SORTED XERO you have had thousands of request for this "feature". Thank you.
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Jack Pivac commented
We've just gone through a price update and doing 100's of repeating invoices manually is a pain, so wrote some code to bulk update prices via the Xero API.
Would there be interest from the community for a basic third-party web based tool that
* Exports all your repeating invoices to csv spreadsheet
* You bulk update prices as required in Excel etc (find and replace)
* Upload spreadsheet to the tool and it'll update all your repeating invoices in XeroWhat value would this bring to you and what would you pay for it if so? Please comment in this thread and we can look at making it usable by everyone for some sort of fee.
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Kerrin Paget commented
As Xero are putting their prices up yet again, this is now critical. We have thousands of clients who subscribe to Xero through us so I will have thousands of repeating invoices to change to reflect the price increase. This is hours of work and should be able to be done more efficiently with changing the item prices and pushing those through to the invoices.
Please do not suggest import and export, it takes just as long to do this as we have to create repeating invoices and delete the drafts. Not a workable solution with the number of invoices we handle.
Please Xero, put priority on this! -
Caroline Pollak commented
This is critical. For another use case as to why Xero needs to solve this problem:
I have my recurring invoices set to auto-approve because I am utilizing Xero's integration with Stripe for auto-pay. The auto-pay function forces me to us Auto approve which emails a customer automatically the invoice. If my invoice needs adjustment, I have to do this after customer gets an email. The customer then complains that the invoice is not correct, and we must say, "Yes" we know and here is your updated invoice. Very poor customer experience. The second major problem, comes from the tax rates. I use the auto-lookup for tax rate (since each city in my state has a different tax rate). when the taxes changes once a year, all my invoices that are set to auto-pay do not update properly. Recurring invoices that are saved as draft, can handle this change by updating the sales tax upon approval. Xero has no solution for this problem. I have to recreate all the invoices again and ask my customers to re-approve auto-pay? Tons of wasted time, or I leave as is and pay the difference in the tax rate to the government. Xero says that this is not a bug because everything works as designed. At some point Xero needs to take ownership for how real world accounting works and call a flaw a bug so that it gets fixed. -
David Clark commented
I feel I should set people's expectations on this - this is something that I've been asking for over 7 years. There was a previous thread on the old Xero Community forum that had hundreds, possibly thousands, of comments from small businesses explaining the importance of this feature.
they all got nicely wiped away when the new product ideas format was rolled out.It would be better if we were given a definitive "You're not getting it because..." from Xero but being ignored is actually more annoying.
I wish I could move away from Xero and probably I should, I certainly don't recommend it any more.
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Jesse Ferguson commented
This is an incredibly important feature, other accounting packages offer price list updates on recurring billing at the click of a button, the methods Xero offers are not good enough especially if you are updating a large volume of prices to many clients, this leaves room for user error and requires a large amount of man power to complete every time there is a pricing change.
Xero, please seriously consider adding this feature as it seems many users have the same issue.