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'Batch Payment - Use Reference from Bill' has been merged into this idea

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Batch Payments: Reference from the Bill instead of Contacts

When generating a batch payment for multiple bills, the reference column of the batch payment is driven from the reference field within the supplier contact.

When a batch payment is made the reference is automatically set from contacts rather than the reference on the invoice. This means that in the reference column of the batch payment the invoice reference is required to manually added, doing this also updates the contact which means this process has to be completed every month otherwise you end up exporting payments with the previous months invoice reference as the payment reference.

The simplest fix is just make the reference for the payment driven from the reference on the invoice, as this is the information the supplier wants to see when the payment hits their bank statement.

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AdminXero Team (Admin, Xero) shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
not planned  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded  · 

Hi everyone, rounding back we appreciate there hasn't been much explanation before now on why this idea is not planned. 

Coming across from our previous forums this has been reviewed by many of our team in product. To start, and explain logic behind the scenes - Xero allows references to be pulled from either:

  • what's been entered as a reference for the contact, or
  • the bill reference

Batch payments is designed to cater for businesses that require the same reference for every invoice via the reference entered in the Contact record.

👉For example utility companies needing an account number entered as a bill reference; so that the utility company knows who paid them.

If you need to have all the payee references be pulled from the bill instead of the contact record then you can remove the reference from the contact field when processing your batch. Moving forward all of the bills selected for the batch payment will have their reference pulled into payee details.

While we’ll continue to enhance the flows and visuals through the batch experience, we don’t have any intentions of changing the way in which the reference’s here behave at this time. Thanks

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  • Soonam Hwang commented  ·   ·  Report

    For over seven years, users have repeatedly requested this missing feature, yet Xero has done nothing but respond with the same old advice: "send remittance notices."
    Who on earth cares about receiving a separate email just for payment notifications? These emails likely end up in the spam folder anyway. It makes you wonder if their QA team has ever actually used Xero for batch payments.
    Xero may advertise itself as "beautiful software," but in reality, it seems to follow the rule of 3N:
    Never listen
    Never fix
    Never move forward

  • Bill Brown commented  ·   ·  Report

    It remains frustrating on this that your proposed solution to "remove the reference from the contact field when processing your batch" still DOES NOT WORK.
    If you simply fixed this issue, then we would have the best of both worlds to satisfy both customer use cases for your product.

    If Contact field has Particulars+Code+Reference, use that in Batch payments.
    If those fields on the Contact have never been set, or are empty strings, use the Invoice number as the reference in the batch payment.

    It seems very clear your code is only checking for NULL/never entered values under the contact for the batch payment setup, instead of properly also checking for an empty string value e.g. "".

  • Alice Hill commented  ·   ·  Report

    Incredibly frustrating the reference field can't auto add to the reference field in batch payments. This goes against the core ethos that Xero supports small business to make their invoicing more simple and save time.

    Excerpt from Xero's website - "We make it happen / Kia koke. Move fast on the right things to deliver value. We value progress over perfection, we drive clarity, decisiveness and accountability, and we continuously learn and refine."

    Progress is not being made on the right things and more energy should be spent to solve this problem. It's such a key feature that should exist, I'm so surprised and disappointed it doesn't already.

    This issue is not insurmountable, just not being prioritised. Make it a priority Xero!

  • Lianne Taylor commented  ·   ·  Report

    Agree dwith this and also when making a batch supplier payment we can see the payment sum but the "Payment Ref" within the accounts transactions detail box is blank so cannot see which supplier it is until we drill down into it, not ideal and takes extra time.

  • Kylie Parry commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is really frustrating. Surely it would be better to populate the reference as the invoice number. Please fix!!

  • Soonam Hwang commented  ·   ·  Report

    @Mandy
    If you are in AU and if it doesn't work then the posting you referred is correct as the function is broken.
    If you are in NZ and if it doesn't work then you are in the wrong country as NZ Xero never had that function ever even though hundreds of clients complained about it for ages.

  • Bill Brown commented  ·   ·  Report

    It is extremely easy to test the supposed fix in the Demo Company and show that it DOES NOT WORK. Simply take a demo Contact, enter and save any example "Particulars, Code, Reference" details in it's Financial details, then remove them and save it again.
    Now try to make a batch payment to a bill for that Contact.
    It will NOT bring the Bill Reference into the Batch Payment "Particulars, Code, Reference" screen for that contact.
    It is extremely frustrating that this still has not been addressed.
    It really should be a setting the tenant can CHOOSE, to decide what data goes into these fields during a batch payment, via the Organisation settings.

  • Kate Yapp commented  ·   ·  Report

    This would be such a time saving feature, please look at this in the next update.

  • Nicole Sullivan commented  ·   ·  Report

    Any updates on when this feature will be available? Very painful / manual currently.

  • Richard Smith commented  ·   ·  Report

    It would be extremely helpful and time saving if the invoice reference transferred over automatically.
    Or even just being able to copy and paste the reference would help a lot.
    Get it sorted please Xero.

  • Shelley Nicholson commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes please, I can't believe this is even an issue with an accounting package to be honest. It would save sooo much time. Can't wait for the change ;) <3

  • Angela Beaumont commented  ·   ·  Report

    This would be extremely helpful. It seems that a lot of people feel the same way. Utility companies are a very small part of our remittances whereas we pay a large amount of invoices to print and other such companies who require a remittance advice. Please reconsider implementing this.

  • James Hammond commented  ·   ·  Report

    I would love this! At the moment it is also a manual process for me, and it would save so much time.

  • Kathleen Ison commented  ·   ·  Report

    This suggestion makes a lot of sense and has been expressly requested by many of the suppliers that we pay (to have invoice number i.e. invoice reference number in the reference field of the payment they receive)

  • Finance - Illawarra Campus & Co commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have been searching for a solution to this. Look forward to Xero improving this feature, as so much time is wasted manually entering the reference in batch payments.

  • Amber McPherson commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is a critical feature and I am super surprised the functionality isn't already there. Please look at prioritizing this !

  • Kathy Macdonald commented  ·   ·  Report

    This shouldn't be locked for voting - I agree that it is quite annoying that the invoice reference cannot be automatically included in batch payments. It is the easiest way for suppliers to know which invoices have been paid by us.

    I find this quite strange especially given if it was the other way around (i.e. someone paying into our account), Xero would use this feature to automatically match invoices in our system that have been paid by customers.

    Would really appreciate this. Even if it's like a placeholder text or something like that, so that the invoice reference can be put through.

    Thanks.

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