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For small businesses: Accounting features

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Many of my clients complain that they 'can't find what they are looking for' when using the top search bar facility. I too often struggle to find things unless I am specific and know the exact detail of a posting. A search return of more options would be very beneficial listing all transactions in relation to any word or value typed into the search bar.

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

Hi team, appreciate the continued engagement in the idea here, apologies I've not returned to update before now.

I want to be upfront that we don't have any plans for changing the logic of search results in the near term. However, I felt it might help to explain how this is working at present to understand results you may be seeing - Global search considers several factors in deciding which results to display, and in what order. These factors include, but aren't limited to:

  • Document type – Document types searched most often get priority in the order of the search results. Contacts and invoices appear at the top of the results, as they’re the most popular search.
  • Term frequency – The frequency the term you search for appears in the document.

The top 25 results across all search categories in Xero. To limit the search to one specific category, click the filter icon, then select the relevant category - Using the Filter to limit results to Contacts may help for some of you here.

It's also worth highlighting also that newly created contacts can take a little time to be indexed in the organisation.

All this said, if you are still finding based on these conditions there are results that aren't appearing that should be please do raise a case with our team of specialists who have tools to get access to your org and dig into investigate why these aren't showing. If needed, they'll be able to raise if there is an issue to our product team. 🙏

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  • Ronette Spark commented  ·   ·  Report

    I find searching for contacts woeful as well - I can set the search to look for contacts but it used to bring up contacts first and then transactions after. If you could allow us to choose which items we want as a default search or at least put it back the way it used to be that would be helpful.

  • Freya Pieroz commented  ·   ·  Report

    Here's a screenshot of a search I did within a client's accounts today. I was trying to open the contact, and no matter how much of the contact's name I entered, it wouldn't give me the contact (only bills and transactions), and then after I had entered a significant portion of the contact's name, it refused to give me any results at all. So I opened up one of those bills so I could show you just how ridiculous it is.

  • Emilie Lambert commented  ·   ·  Report

    I too am recently struggling with the search bar. When you search for a contact (supplier/customer) using the search bar, no contacts come up. Instead it lists unrelated invoices or bills and e.g. spend moneys. It would be fantastic if the search bar would start showing contacts that match the search criteria again!

  • Lishelle Young commented  ·   ·  Report

    I think this is a new issue- it's been bugging me too. For instance, I might have regular invoices from a supplier, but if I use the search bar to search for this supplier, I get a tonne of hits- but most of them from 2018. It's woefully unhelpful.