New Invoicing - Allow Item and Description-only lines, with no Qty or Unit Price
When choosing item code and description, I want the ability to leave the rest of the fields blank. Classic invoicing had no problems with it. The new invoicing wants to populate QTY, UNIT PRICE and AMOUNT. Makes the invoice look unappealing.
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Thanks for all your feedback here, everyone. The way you add description only lines in new invoicing is a little different to classic and we wanted to explain in hopes it'll help with how you're using new invoicing.
When entering a description only line, you can enter text in the description field of the line. If you add detail to any other field the line will be treated as a 'financial' line and you will need to include Qty, Unit price, Account and Tax rate.
When an inventory item is added this uses the item code field and the line is treated as 'financial', so it's not possible to use inventory items as description only lines in new invoicing atm.
We appreciate this is how many of you here have been making use of inventory and our product team are closely monitoring the feedback we're getting on this. Though we don't have any solid plans for changing this right now we will keep the idea under review, and share if there's any change planned.
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Ange Mason commented
Very disappointing how simple things are being over looked. We are NOT asking for anything major. It works in your other invoicing really well. Just fix it please!!
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Liam Taylor commented
This is terrible, looks very unprofessional and like i am to lazy to delete
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Esther Lawrence commented
Hi, thank you for looking into this for me, I just assumed it was an oversight in the new invoicing set up and therefore did not raise a case, it was just defaulting to the number I had just deleted. 0 is ok, which seems to be working now; I definitely would prefer it to remain blank, that being said, it is not as important as a lot of the other suggestions, especially a full history and notes, so you can close my suggestion as part of it is obsolete, thanks.
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Carolyn Higgs commented
Here's how I get around it:
I have my descriptive text still saved in Products and Services. When I create an invoice, I still enter the item code to bring this text into the invoice.Once it is in the invoice, Ctrl-C the text, scroll down to the next empty line, and Ctrl-V it into an empty line. Delete the original line that came in from Products and Services (which will now have the quantity and tax rate etc). You now have just the text. It is less fiddly than retyping.
If necessary, I slide the text-only line back to the top or bottom of the invoice, depending on where I like it.
Another trick is to open the client's previous invoice, select "copy to draft invoice" from the top left three-dot menu, and update the new draft with the new invoice quantities. As Xero didn't seem to save the "financial" status of the line when it was only text, copying that invoice to a new draft doesn't bring any of that info over - just the text.
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Esther Lawrence commented
It would even help if it automatically changed to xero if the amount was deleted, rather than just bringing back what you just deleted.
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Esther Lawrence commented
New Invoicing - Allow blank quantity field while drafting
With new invoicing, when you copy from an old invoice and just want to change the quantity, you can't delete all the quantity column and leave the quantity fields blank temporarily, it will always automatically revert back to the copied quantity if you delete it, but don't put another quantity in straight away, this makes a lot of extra work, as I have to go through every quantity field and type 0 as a place holder until I can go through the quantity column updating and changing as necessary. Can you please allow quantity field to be left blank temporarily while editing. -
Lee Rushgrove commented
This is really important to my clients using Xero. They have invoices with multiple line items and having to type each description individually takes time that seems wasted when this worked with Classic Invoicing - not sure why you can't continue the same with the New Invoicing. Please revise your "not having any solid plans for changing this" and get it fixed. It would be much appreciated. Also, it would be good to know what the benefits are of the New Invoicing vs the Classic. Thanks, Lee.
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Tropical Waste commented
Thanks for all your feedback but we're going to ignore you?
WOW.
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Lee Langridge commented
When adding an inventory item to an invoice, not updating invoice details such as description, account codes ect if these details have been left blank in the products and services tab
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Helen Schafer commented
I should hope so. Considering there are no other custom fields available on invoices and Xero themselves in the past have recomnended using inventory items as a work around!
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Kathy Ludlam commented
So far, I am failing to find any of the changes an improvement to the previous version - they just appear to be changes for the sake of change. The change to not being able to add description only lines from inventory items seems to be a problem for many and is going to make invoicing very time consuming if we have to manually enter everything. Cannot believe this is considered an improvement and there is no plan to update this. Seems very unprofessional Xero not to be listening to your customers.
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Helen Schafer commented
Hi Barbara. I have voted for this functionality also. However, I think in your case you could solve the issue with a Custom Invoice Template which can only show the total on the invoice and not individual unit prices, quantities or individual line items. Happy to have a complimentary chat about it and point you in the right direction. Find me at Living Business in NZ.
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Barbara Steele commented
I’m new to Xero, and can only repeat what the many other users have said already, and elegantly summarized by Michael Warwick 13 March PLEASE make the item code not financial.
I need item codes and descriptions on my invoices but only total owed on final line. I don’t use unit or quantity fields.
Atm my invoice tells my clients each of the items costs $0.00 then the last line comes with the invoice total, which is definitely not zero dollars.
Messy, unprofessional and very hard to believe this is an improvement.
Also X’eros attitude of “no plans to change it atm” and offering no other viable solution is very disappointing. -
Anastasiia Dorodnaia commented
I am in the same position as Janet. We need site, partner, address, and client data on each invoice, and this does not require financial data to be entered. I've tried very hard to switch our procedure to "new invoicing," but it is so time-consuming and lacks basic required functionality that we have to revert to "Classic invoicing" every time. I am horrified that there are less than two months left before Classic invoicing is retired on Xero, and we will be left with only these ugly, dysfunctional "improvements."
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Janet Nuske commented
We currently have a SITE DETAILS item code and then in the description there is a template to which we add site and job specific details such as site address, operator, job completion date etc.
For your NEW INVOICING to work and look correct we would have to type the whole lot out for each and every invoice. The new invoicing already has added many more keystrokes and inconveniences and I am at the stage of looking for another accounting software package -
W A Stewart Limited - commented
I agree with comments below to add a description line as suggested or add an option in Products & Services for Notes only which doesn't have any financial links.
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Bianca Hibbert commented
Do we have a solution for this?
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Emily McRorie commented
Add in the description field without a monetary value.
It would be good if we can add a description to the invoice without putting in a monetary value within that row.
Sometimes we have jobs where we describe the work done in the description field (which we could do in old invoicing) and want no $$ there within that row, and then add the $$$ rows underneath.
If I do this, the invoice appears with 0.00 in the description row which looks messy. -
Annie Thorne commented
I'll add my support to this - I need to be able to have text only lines in some invoices. For frequently used text - reiteration of my payment and cancellation policies, as an example - I have this saved as a "product" so it can be quickly added when needed. Obviously there is no financial value to this, and so it currently looks absolutely ridiculous.
Please listen to your users requesting this - really useful, really simple - feature to be retained in the 'new' invoicing. -
Lloyd Preston commented
Just jumping in on this one - along with the other many threads about the issue with the new invoice format issues - agree with discussion here - being able to add lines to an invoice for notes to customer about detail related to service etc is very important, under new invoice, the addition of qty 1 and $0.00 lines is very unprofessional and looks terrible - another reason to start looking at alternative solutions out there.