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I don't think Xero is at all interested in small users, despite the reality that most small users will grow their businesses. I doubt very much that Xero even looks at the ideas they proudly post. The limits on invoices and bills are just a rip-off. Website orders are included in the 20 maximum invoices per month, reducing the number of invoices that we can raise for non-website sales.
Then consider the unilateral to changes to Stripe payments, which has stuffed up our reconciliations completely and cost us a small fortune with our accountant to resolve, let alone the costs for the website guy to trouble shoot credit card payment problems.
Xero is a disaster and we wouldn't use it except our accountant requires it.

Back in September 2022, I suggested increasing the bill limit on Xero’s Starter Plan because the 5-bill cap is simply not practical for small businesses. Since then, many users have backed this request, yet nothing has changed, even after Xero’s pricing updates.

@Xero, it’s been over two years, can we finally get an increase to a more reasonable limit? Small businesses need flexibility, not restrictions.

This has been an issue for years especially when they increased the invoices to 20 a month and unlimited bank lines. When it originally came out you were limited to 5 invoices & bills a month and 20 bank lines. They never increased the bill limit though.
It's a pain as I've sometimes had suppliers send invoices through late and due to having already entered 5 bills it can't be recorded correctly without doing a journal which then doesn't show on a payables list.

It was this reason I moved one of my sole Traders to Reckon - their package is along the same lines as Xero's Standard one but considerably cheaper and I can do everything needed that Xero's standard allows but Start/Ignite doesn't.

Their Ignite package is overpriced for what is offered.

I totally agree, 15-20 should be where its at for the price you pay for the ignite package. I don't see the point temporarily upgrading to double the cost for a few extra bills especially as I wont use the extra features as a small business owner and only employee of the business.

Another idea I saw and support was to purchase additional bills as you go, however, I think increasing from 5 to 15/20 is far more reasonable and fair.

Xero should track rollover credits for unused bills from prior months, and allow pay-as-you go to approve bills above your limit/rollover credits.

The promise of cloud software was pay for what you consume, not arbitrary quotas!

I am another business that finds this 5 bill monthly limit makes working with Xero impractical. Given that most businesses will have more than 5 expenses a month it makes user the Ignite subscription only workable with an excel spreadsheet. It should be increased to 10-20 to actually make it useful

The limit of 5 bills a month in the Starter/Ignite Subscription is too low, this has to be increased to at least 10-20 bills per month which seams fair for a small business.
The price increase from Ignite (Starter) to Grow (Standard) is excessive just to use the function of a couple more bills for a small business.

Dear Xero

I'm a user of your Starter business plan, but also a 2nd user of your Starter Plan for another business it has some limitations. I am a small business trade service which has supplier bills for each invoice, 5 bills is useless. I wish I could use the 5 bills of the 2nd program as i only use it for invoicing only as we have the accounting on a separate program in our office but i cant. the jump to the next level is too much expense and there are other programs which offer for less money. This really need attention for small business owners who don't do much accounting.

The limit of 5 bills a month has to be increased to at least 10 or 20 which seams fair for a small business. I don't see the value of your price increase for basic features we need. The price has bee increase since subscription but no useable feature for me.
I don't use payroll so you could take that out.

The other issue with 5 bills its allocated to each month, so should you have no bills the following month you can't even use the 5 bill options for previous months.

They have never increased the bill limit. They increased the invoice limit and the bank reconciliation lines (used to be only 20 lines a month if I remember when this one started) Invoices were only 5 like bills, they increased that and the bank lines but have never addressed the bill limit.
Due to this one of my clients has to use the next one up just to process her bills and she doesn't issue invoices from Xero these are done from outside Xero.
For this reason I am moving her to a cheaper option that allows everything and more in their package that would be equal to what she is currently on and is going to save her over $600.00 a year in fees. While you do have to go with some of what is set up I can work with that for what she needs without having to upgrade to their next one which is still cheaper than Xero.
Xero no longer seem to be what they started out to be - competitive against other packages and for the small business, yet justify these constant price increases due to the so called improvements they push on their customers yet continue to ignore what is asked and in some cases been asked for over a number of years.

Interesting that Xero doesn't even comment on this obvious problem

What Xero are charging for effectively a trial accounting package once you consider the 5 bills per month is just an assault on small business customers.

I spoke to my salesman about this and the response I got was "I'll pass it on, but the higher ups are arranging the pricing to move away from small businesses and they are sure they know what they are doing"

It seems a crazy strategy to me, bigger businesses would never see Xero as a good fit, then the marketing is all about getting your small business out of a shoe box.

Well, if your shoe box only has 5 bills a month in it, you'll be fine, if not you'll be paying 2-3 times the cost of other products in the market which for all purposes will be more suitable.

I mean $90AUD / per month to enter bills and pay wages for a second employee after yourself is plainly prohibitively expensive for a step up from shoe box bookkeeping and I'd blame no one for sticking with that system and pocketing the $1,100 a year.

As an experience bookkeeper, certified accountant, Xero Expert and university lecturer in accounting, I am disappointed that Xero wants to price per Bill entered. It is very important for a business to have clear visibility of their costs, due dates, supplier rates etc rather than just reconciling bank transactions to Spend Money.

Please don't encourage short cuts that will damage cash-flow visibility and historical cost tracking.

Please re-think this Xero. There is a cost of living crisis on, more small businesses are folding than ever and Xero makes a tidy profit, so don't penalise your customers who are loyal and operating best practice.

I could potentially accept this if the limits actually worked. However both my "billing month" and "calendar month" have rolled over and I am still unable to approve any new bills.

Xero is a rip off. We once had a much bigger business and the flexibiity of the software was amazing. It was a fully integrate MRP system. Now that we have a small retirement business our accountant asked us to use Xero. It's very limited and I can't see why it costs so much
With the price increase, I have downgraded to the Ignite plan but those artifical limts on invoices and bills are a poor joke. What they don't in their plan details is that if you go over 20 invoices in a month, you get a one off bonus 5 invoices. That's it. Then you have to upgrade to the next level at twice the cost. I suggested to their tech help that 240 invoices a year would make more sense. I also suggested that unused invoices should roll over to the next month. He suggested I post the idea here.
Xero is just not customer focussed.
What happened to the idea that their job is to excite the customer. They seem **** bent on antagonising instead.
Small customers usually grow in small amounts. The Xero plans make big steps that just put customers off.
How about it Xero? Excite us - don't antagonise us.

Totally agree - i cant work out how the 5 bill limit is applied - my client has only entered one bill in the current calendar month and Im being told the limit is reached... Its far too low to be of any value to even the smallest of businesses, and the cost of the standard plan is getting far too high for really small operators. There is no flexibility over months as mentioned.

To echo Vicky Tan below, the invoice limit is a huge issue for sole trader healthcare professionals. I am a solo physiotherapist in Australia, and like most of you have no need for bulk reconciliation or payroll. I only need Xero to track my expenses and revenue for GST & tax purposes.

As in Vicky's case, I do all invoicing through my clinical software (Splose). This is automatically synced with Xero which is admittedly very handy, but each invoice payment that I reconcile through Xero counts toward the limit; forcing me onto the Grow plan.

I initially chose Xero for the simple and cheap functionality of the Starter/Ignite plan, but am now considering Quickbooks or even simpler all in one solutions like Hnry...

I can see that @Kelly Munro "responded" on Sep 9, 2022 however there wasn't any updates. I'm not sure if there ever will be.

@Ben Fairless Hear hear!!

Increasing the number of bills we can have is the least you can do for continually ripping us off with price increases.

@Joana - they are money grabbing now as I see it with these increased costs - increased the Ignite Plan but no additional bill increase limit at all. I would move my one to that plan but as mentioned before the bill limit doesn't work so she is stuck with the Standard/Grow one unless I can find another package elsewhere that will reduce her costs.