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Will it possible to have a sending date that is before the posting date of the invoice? The invoice needs to be sent on the 25th of the month, but the posting date needs to be the 1st of the next month. For example: The invoice needs to be sent out on 25 March but the posting date will be 1 April.

We desperately need the ability to recognize deferred revenue in an automated fashion. Currently we use QBO, BUT it requires deferred revenue to be product-based and the P&L computations are not correct. It is double-dipping and creating a nightmare - hence our look to Xero.

I just my first day at looking at things you stand head and shoulders above QBO in many ways. BUT, not support SaaS businesses is a real problem and I would bet you're losing more revenue than you know. Please reconsider putting this on the immediate development timeline. You could own the market with this additional functionality.

It could be a simple as a button: Defer revene? Yes/No. if Yes - over how many months. Then, it is a fairly straightforward programming on the back end to divide by the number of months and appropriately debit/credit the correct accounts.

This is sorely sorely needed. Our customers typically pay annually or quarterly in advance - you should see the spreadsheet I now have to manage to account for revenue over time! Quickbooks have a really nice feature for this and this is significant enough a problem for us that we plan to move over at the end of the calendar year.

To confirm then, Accrual Accounting is not supported in Xero.

Which is the best product for doing this; Quickbooks, Sage? Thanks for the insight. Paul

This would be a very helpful feature - please reconsider developing it.

I must be missing something in the system, as it is just basics. The ability to pay an invoice (say for an annual subscription or registration fee) and have that split over the period of time the registration is for, eg 12 months, so it is recognised in the P&L as a monthly cost to the business (if it's a 12 month fee).
This surely is already there?

This app is working towards being a cost-effective solution for deferred revenue (and also forecasts from the repeating invoices schedules, and more)

Early stages but the roadmap is interesting

https://trimly.app/

We should be able to book sale invoice or purchase invoice with a period (start and end dates) and the software could be able to automate the cut-off.
Several accounting softwares have already this function.
Xero should catch-up this function before losing the clients.

Crazy. we are a Saas business. the model requires accounting treatment which recognises a multi-month or year subscription over time. It wastes hours of my time and my book keeper's time in dealing with the platform's lack of support for this feature, costs my business money as well. I do not recommend your product for any Saas or susbcription business.

Hello Xero users, I have found a workaround with the minimum amount of manual steps, using a software called GAccon, let me know if you need help in setting this up

Very disappointing to see this is not even planned let alone in the product.

Allow for the revenue of an invoice to be recognised over a period of time, as defined by the user.

Ideally, you should also be able to recognise a "carve-out" (i.e. a % of the invoice) upfront, and then the remainder is spread over the invoice period.

What would also be great is to be able to define the revenue recognition of multi-year contracts. For example, you may have locked in a client for 3 years at Y1 = £100, Y2=£120, Y3=£140. You would then want to recognise the revenue of the locked in contract value (£360) over the 36 months (£10 per month assuming no carve-out).

Please help me understand how a SaaS Accounting software does not offer essential accounting tools for SaaS businesses?

Is Xero using Xero for its own accounting? Is this the real reason why there is no annual pricing option for Xero?

As noted below - as a saas business that needs to recognize revenue over the contract period we will eventually leave xero just for this issue.

Manually moving expenses to P&l from prepayment assets for bills for services that span financial years is a pain. Why not allow me to allocate an invoice to a time span when it arrives, then get Xero to automatically release it from prepayments to the P&l without any further intervention from the user.

Could do the same thing on invoices I raise for eg. A subscription for the year ahead. Automatically release revenue to the P&l month by month based on date span information contained in the invoice.

I can't believe it's 2023 and you still don't offer this feature. Most tech businesses are SaaS and most of us sell yearly packages. This is a must for all of us.

Without this feature, Xero is basically a non-starter for SaaS companies who don't want to do a ton of manual entries each month.

A critical requirement. I'm constantly amazed that Xero doesn't support this. The same applies to phased recognition of costs/ invoices paid in advance.

Please develop this feature so that I can use it for a few new clients that I am working with.

Please develop this feature as soon as possible, it is critical for my company