Lock Dates - Allow old bills/invoices to fall into current accounting period
Once you close a period, pulled all the accounts and happy with the financial position, you close the period to stop posting to that period. But when you receive a old supplier invoice, which has been accrued in, Xero does not allow you to post the invoice without re-opening the period date. This means, you either reverse your accrual journal to post the older invoice, changing the financial position or manully altering the invoice date, to post it into current period. Increases workload and hassle. It also means your supplier account does not mirror with their accounts with dates. Xero should allow invoices to be automatically posted to open period.

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Deanne Potter commented
100% agree, this feature is basic accounting 101, system should differentiate between Invoice date and GL Date (aka period date)
Would love to see this enhancement come to Xero, as it would really enhance the platform and allow it scale with businesses -
Joanne Meese commented
as per the below comment, totally agree, you should not have to put fictious date into the system, or keep periods open just incase! If you close periods and enter invoices into correct current periods but with the correct Invoice date that would be a much smoother system.
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Anne Thomas commented
I totally agree. Being date driven for everything is fine if everything is perfect. I'm forever having to reopen periods or putting fictitious dates into the system. I'd really prefer an ability to close a period but enter transactions into an open period using the correct date.
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charlotte callanan commented
The most detrimental part of this is that you can not change a reference or a department on an invoice without having to open the closed off period.
This has caused us so many issues as i constantly need to open the period when a client advises of any changes to an invoice or if the department was incorrect. Surely items that do not affect the numbers should be ok to amend at any point...makes no sense to me -
Tanya Young commented
Agreed!!! There should always be the facility to enter the correct VAT date even if a period is shut - it should just fall into the current open VAT period.
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Eric Adatia commented
Agreed! Not sure why there are so few votes for this. It is crazy that we have to enter a fictitious invoice date just to be able to enter an invoice into Xero if a period has been locked. If the period is locked then the invoice should post into the most current open period so that you preserve the invoice documentation and also leave the locked period unchanged.
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Miranda Matthews commented
I 100% agree. I love using Xero, but this by far would have to be one of the system's biggest downfalls. It creates unnecessary rework. xero needs to implement the concept of a transaction date and accounting period posted for transactions.