New Invoicing - Reduce number of steps and clicks
New invoicing has introduced more clicks, taps, steps at almost every level.
Please remove the added friction as it increases processing time.
The "new invoicing" messages are full of comments regarding where these pressure points have been added.
We are paid subscribers, and beta testing/seeking feedback is wonderful, but being forced onto an inferior model is.. suboptimal.
Hi everyone, some time on since my last update I wanted to give you more of an idea of the work we have going on to help reduce the number of steps and actions in new invoicing. Along with the changes mentioned in my last update, we've since released a change to the view of an invoice to shift details back into their own columns (similar to classic), while a small change we know it's improved visibility for some of our customers.
We also have other work in development atm that’ll further help here like a new line item grid when editing your invoice - wrapped up in this we’ll be introducing changes you’ve been asking for like the ability to create a new tracking option or account code without having to navigate away from the invoice, we’re increasing the number of items that you can view from the drop down, and we’ll be bringing back the ability to view the number of stock on hand.
As mentioned in my last post, our team is developing shortcuts for the drop down actions like Approve and Save so you have more ease of selecting the option that's best for you.
We also have some updates coming to;
- The Contact card, so you’ll be able to add more details without having to go to the contact record, like more address lines, ability to look up addresses, and entering an Attention to all items we’ve heard lots of feedback on
- Issue and Due date picking where we’ll make it quicker to simply select a calendar date and we’ll be adding more keyboard shortcuts such as the ability to enter +0 for today’s date
- Ability to drag & drop files that we’re enhancing so you’ll be able to do this anywhere on the invoice rather than a specific area
Again, thank you all for sharing and continuing to let us know the improvements that make a difference for you when working with new invoicing. We'll update you as items I've mentioned above are released.
-
Carston Leishman commented
DISCOUNTS???
I used to be able to click the discount field per line item and the customers discount would populate automatically. Now, I have to remove the client, and re-add client for the discounts to automatically apply.
These discounts are at client level and do not show up anywhere on screen.
This is *** backward and a downgrade. -
Margaret Deneau commented
I agree with all these points
-
George Pogostin commented
Adding a payment to an invoice inside that invoice is crucial, please bring that back... this is a downgrade on the new invoicing.
-
Adam Suhan commented
The new invoice page is a step in the wrong direction for what Xero should be:
1) You cannot quickly enter a date, before you could type 2 9 and it would auto fill as 2 September of the current year, now you have to click the box to select it, click the left arrow to go back as many months as you need to and then select the date
2) You cannot quickly set a due date, before you could type +30 and it would auto fill as 30 days from the invoice date. Now you have a limited selection of prefilled dates or have to open up a calendar to select a date, if you have payment terms such as +20, you have to manually count 20 days from the calendar.
3) You cannot quickly mark something as paid, before you would go to the bottom and type in the date and bank account. Now you have to click a button to have a pop-up appear for the same options.
4) You cannot quickly add attachments, before you would just drag and drop anywhere on the invoice and it would attach itself. Now you have to click a button to open up the attachment box and then drag and drop it into the tiny area it opens with.
5) You cannot quickly change the address, before there was a "Edit address" option right on the invoice you could select to edit the address. Now you have to click on the contact and then select edit.
6) You cannot quickly open the contact so you can find their history, before you could middle click on a contact to open up their history in a new tab so you can see when you last billed them. Now you have to click the contact and then click it again to open it in the contact page
-
Matt Brown commented
Uploading an attached file now needs a click before the upload, whereas before, we could simply drag and drop the file. Also, the new invoicing does not show the product quantity left in stock, when the quantity is edited. This was an important feature of the classic invoicing.
The look and layout of the new invoicing looks clunky, compared with the old and the rest of the Xero interface.
It says a lot about the new invoicing that I continually switch back to the old version. The new version is not better.
-
Giles Ashbee commented
I see that Xero are letting us use 'classic' invoicing until February now. That's nice. Having just read a multiple of posts does anyone actually like the new layout/features? Please listen to your customers and just leave classic as a permanent option going forward.
-
Jane Godfrey commented
Our invoice approval policy means that someone posts the invoice then moves it to awaiting approval. Then they are approved by the Head of Finance. To do this I used to go to the bottom button and go through the Approve drop down to click "Approve & View Next" at the bottom of the screen . On the new version I have to go back up to the top to approve the invoice and then back to the "awaiting Approval" to see the next invoice as there is no option to see the next invoice, please add this facility back in and move it to the bottom of the invoice so we don't have to scroll all the way back to the top of a long invoice.
-
Genine North commented
The classic invoicing has the option for the default due date to be selected, can this feature be added to the new invoicing system.
The is really helpful when a client changes payment terms from our invoice terms, we need to change in the client financial then open every invoice to update the new terms. By selecting default it does it so much faster.
-
Mirela Ovelar commented
Hi Team, I can only hope that you are listening to the users feedback, as this new invoicing release is the worst version so far. I haven't seen one user happy with the "improvements" you made. It has created nothing but a lot of frustration in the workplace. I used to be a software developer, and I can tell you there are ways to do a friendly user interface that can be configured, or at least allow the previous interface to coexist with the new one using a setting, and monitor how many users are actually using the new version. That will give you an idea of how useful your "improvements" are. I won't even mention the troubles the new invoicing has, as hundreds of posts are already mentioning them all. Get your act together, Xero developers and project managers, it is the 21st century and you can do a lot better. If you can't, allow people to use the existing version for as long as they desire.
Thank you. -
Jennifer Broadbent commented
Your New Invoicing is not user friendly for our business. It is our working system for all of our work - not just used for creating Invoices. We work with Drafts a lot while the work is in progress until it is completed - that can take several weeks to achieve so the old Font size was so much easier and we (approx 5 different employees) could look at and work on all our Drafts easily - 200+ per month. Only when job is completed is the Draft Approved and sent to Invoice so having to re-open it all the time instead of just saving makes it so much harder. Font size is way too large meaning I waste time naviagting around the invoice page. We never create an invoice then approve and send it immediately. Why is that the default? What happened to the blue Save button and Green Approve button. The mono-colour is not easy to work with.
The Chart of Accounts items do not come up correctly especially if they do not have $ values attached to them. We often need to put in lines that do not have $ values or quantities and do not want to see "1" in Quantity or 0.00 in the Amount column. We just want those blank unless we choose to put something in there. Classic Invoicing is so good and tidy. The time wasted on the New Invoicing means $$ wasted across 5+ employees. New Invoicing assumes we just want to make a simple invoice and send it immediately. This is useful for maybe a retail business selling online or something. Not for most businesses from what I can tell from the people commenting. Why can't you keep both going and customers can choose? -
Anna Conaghan commented
The new invoicing is causing so much extra work and so many extra clicks its frustrating!
Points of note: Why do we have to save the new contact details before proceeding, before we could just tab to the new field enter and save at the end.
Why is there not a "copy to delivery" field so we don't have to enter these details twice?!?!? Better yet, use the auto address system like you have in the contacts area so pick up the addresses.
There is no ATTN to in the invoicing area of creating a contact.
WHY have the save buttons been moved to the top? - they used to be at the top and the bottom - for the most part I have to keep scrolling up to the top to save things - it's the little things Xero!
Overall it's causing a lot of extra work and unnecessary steps.
-
Freya Pieroz commented
The drag and drop spot in invoicing closes when autosaving. If you wait (forever!) until it's finished saving that you clicked somewhere before starting to attach documents, the drag and drop spot is more likely to stay open.
-
Kathy Skinner commented
That's because they don't even know why it does that. I get similar answers when I have issues with other sites, log in under incognito mode still doesn't help in some cases even after clearing cookies etc - I use Google Chrome all the time and generally there is no issue so it's at their end with all the changes I bet and they just don't want to admit they are failing their customers.
-
Claire Barning commented
@Emily Aspden - I have struck the same problem and contacted Xero Support about it, they just told me to clear cookies, history etc, and then to change from Microsoft Edge Browser to Google Chrome = guess what no difference, they then suggested I need to use Xero in Incognito Mode. Certainly not helping or getting much from support. Can I suggest you log this also with support and see if you get any better answer, as all the one's I got, have gotten me no where.
-
Emily Aspden commented
There seems to be a glitch with the attach documents function. Often times when I try to attach documents to an invoice, I go through the process of uploading the file, click upload and then nothing happens. I then do it again (in exactly the same way) and it works. So I have to upload twice for it to register. Can this be fixed please?
So often I find invoices haven't had the relevant uploads because we have gone through the process and not realised it's not registered until it's too late, so we then have to go back through past files to find the relevant documents for that invoice. Now we know it's common we have to remember to do it twice... even then I still find invoices with no files uploaded so twice clearly doesn't always work either.
Also, there was the issue of when you copy an invoice to a new one, the default payment terms for that client didn't copy through with it. You seem to have temporarily fixed this (at least I'm hoping it's only temporary!), with a note to remove and reselect the customer. Yes this works but yet another set of unnecessary clicks which can easily be missed - just in case there aren't plans to change this, please take this as a request that it does need to be changed so that the defaults copy over with the customer.
-
Jim Morris commented
Clicks to complete an invoice have increased at least 300%. Even using Tab more often to move between fields cannot solve the excessive click-fest that invoicing has become...
...and don't even get me started on the inconsistency of clicking into a field where sometimes it highlights the current data so you can overwrite and at other times doesn't or puts the cursor in the wrong place so you have to delete and start again... -
Lloyd Preston commented
Its been mentioned before in this post or some of the other post re new invoicing - trying to attach doc's to a new invoice is a paid. You have to open a window and not only that you have to save the invoice/quote before it will let you drag the doc into a specific area that you have to click on to allow attachments - more clicks and pain for uses and the customer whom pays for the solution which is becoming more a nightmare than a world winning solution.
Why will Xero not listen - even tried to get Herald to investigate - don't think they did but how do we communicate with management and shareholders that persisting with this forced change will lose a lot of goodwill and in the long run customers - hopefully they will do a survey - you know - how likely are you to recommend Xero to customer - 0 Unlikely
-
Abby Stewart commented
The pop-up boxes on the bottom left of the screen are very annoying; we have to "x" out of them before adding another line in the invoice.
The "Attention" contact box is gone. We used this frequently.
We can't see the full text in the Account or tax settings boxes because the boxes are so large. An easy fix would be to make the Quantity, Price, and Amount boxes narrower, so we can see more of the other text.
-
Massimiliano Cacciamani commented
Hey, revolutionary idea:
Keep the layout and functionality of classic invoicing, and only change what is happening in the background.
This will keep people happy.
The other option would be to carry on with your planned phase out of the classic invoicing, because Xero doesn't give a truck about what their users want.
-
Mary Roberts commented
Hi...I am getting used to new invoicing, but there is still an issue for me when emailing an invoice. If I look at history it will tell me the email address of the FIRST person I sent the invoice to. However, if I send the same invoice to another email address, all history tells me is that the invoice has been updated. I really need to know all the email addresses this invoice has been sent to. An update for this issue would be appreciated please.