Invoicing - Calendar run from Monday - Sunday (UK)
ISO 8601, the international standard for date and time formatting (adopted in the UK), defines Monday as the first day of the week. In invoicing Sunday seems to have been adopted recently and I can see from another thread this was deliberate, but this is NOT UK standard and our calendars adopt a Monday start so will confuse all UK users. Maybe adopt a setting where the user can define the setting instead of trying to suit the whole world...
Sally Stubbs
shared this idea
Thanks for your feedback, Sally. We appreciate there may be different preference for this.
You're right this was a brief change that was made in invoicing however in consistency with how calendars appear in other areas of Xero this has been changed back and we also received feedback for calendars to run Sunday - Saturday.
While we will track the interest from others in this here we want to be upfront that we don't have any further plans for changing start dates of this calendar.
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Anthony Kear
commented
So Xero want their calendars to be wrong for most of the world?
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Sally Stubbs
commented
It’s also worth highlighting that the main reason many users asked for the calendar to switch back to Sunday was, I believe, due to inconsistency across the platform — not because Monday was inherently a problem.
In that instance, invoicing used Monday as the week start, while other areas of Xero still used Sunday. Naturally, this misalignment caused confusion, and users pushed for it to be reverted — not necessarily because they preferred Sunday, but because they needed consistency.
That’s why this situation isn’t quite comparable. What people were reacting to was the inconsistency — not objecting to Monday as a start day itself.
A user-defined calendar start day would address both concerns: consistency within the user’s own environment, and flexibility to match their region's standard or personal preference.
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Sally Stubbs
commented
Thanks for your response – I appreciate the clarity.
However, I’d like to reiterate the importance of aligning Xero’s calendar with widely accepted standards, or at the very least, offering flexibility for users.
As mentioned earlier, ISO 8601, the international standard for date and time formatting (which is also adopted in the UK and much of the EU), clearly defines Monday as the first day of the week. This is reflected across UK operating systems, productivity tools (such as Outlook and Google Calendar when set to UK locale), and in accounting workflows.
When Xero’s invoicing calendar defaults to Sunday–Saturday, it diverges not only from ISO 8601 but also from user expectations in many regions, particularly the UK and Europe. This inconsistency can lead to confusion, misalignment in reporting periods, and manual errors – especially when reconciling invoicing timelines with calendars used elsewhere in business processes.
While I understand the need to maintain consistency within Xero’s interface, this is exactly why offering a user-defined calendar start day would be the best solution. A simple preference setting would allow each user to align the software with their local standards or business practices, without disrupting users in other regions.
This isn’t about accommodating one region over another – it’s about providing a flexible, user-centric experience in a global platform.
Please do reconsider this request as more than a preference. For many of us, it’s a matter of professional consistency, operational clarity, and compliance with internationally recognised standards.
Thanks again for listening.
Kind regards,
Sally