Reconciliation - Allow credit notes to show and be selected on the find & match screen
Ability to show and can select credit notes on the find & match screen.
Purpose: To save time rather than having to go in and allocate the credit note against an invoice then going back to the bank reconciliation screen.

Hi community, first off thank you for the continued interest and feedback surrounding this idea. We’re continuing to build on the bank reconciliation experience in Xero and recognise the ways this feature will help improve the efficiency, flexibility and transparency of transactions in your business. Our team have done a lot of exploration into being able to surface and match Credit Notes when reconciling your bank account in Xero, and this is now in development.
We’ll shift the idea here into ‘Working on it’ and continue to update as there’s more detail of this to share.
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Patrick James and Co commented
@Chris Rogers
You're not serious?FreeAgent has a terrible functionality problem with dealing with Directors Loan Accounts, fixed assets and depreciation and thinks it can calculate Corporation Tax itself, which it can't. It's just not user friendly. It's not simple, it's clunky.
Crapbooks is unusable rubbish that's not fit for purpose.
We have over 75 clients on Xero, 3 remaining on Crapbooks - with many of our clients making the move to Xero in recent years. People are leaving Crapbooks in droves, because it's rubbish. There's no point discussing it further.Sage Line50 was always the market leader, but when the world moved online, they got left behind and priced themselves out of the market. They have been trying to catch up ever since and Sage Online is not the same product as Sage Line50. They have made improvements in recent years, granted.
Until anything better comes along, Xero is the best value for money - presently - out there.
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Chris Rogers commented
@Patrick James and Co: That's not true for everyone, I stopped recommending Xero in 2018. What does Xero have over Sage, Quickbooks, Freeagent? Nothing.
Sage and Quickbooks are perfectly functional for our larger clients, Freeagent's simplicity is perfect for our micro clients. Xero is a complete non-starter, it's not just these unfulfilled feature requests that are the problem, the UI is horrendous and I hate using it everyday.
The only reason we use Xero at all is for clients who transfer in who have been using it for years.
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Valerie Hague commented
We all need to get onto our Xero account managers (if you can find out who yours is) and lobby them. I once had a call from a developer in the USA asking about what we wanted. I replied at length, sent scenarios etc. still nothing. Maybe I'll lobby the CEO next....
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Patrick James and Co commented
Claire, Lisa, Nigel, et al:
Sadly Xero have gone the way of other software companies and put money first.
They must have millions of subscribers by now, because all things considered, it's a far better piece of software than Sage online, the abominable Crapbooks and the laughable FreeAgent.
So, in their confidence that we won't leave them in our droves, they keep putting the price up whilst ignoring our please for basic, fundamental accounting functionality.
In a nutshell, it doesn't matter how many people post on all of the credit note threads (there were a few, because there is an outcry for the software's inability to deal with credit notes correctly), as long as they are still taking our money, they just don't care.
Keep voting, though! -
Nigel Hazelwood commented
@Lisa Winchester. A workaround we've used is to mark the credit as paid or received, and then in the bank rec, under Find & Match, select "Show Received Items," and the credits marked as paid or received will appear. Refer to screenshots. It's not ideal, but you don't have to match credits to bills or invoices and guess what the customer or vendor does.
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Lisa Winchester commented
I'm so annoyed they've closed off that other thread. Every month I LOATHE having to match 100s of credit notes to random invoices. There must be a simpler way!
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Claire Barning commented
Unfortunately on another feed also regarding the ability to properly use Credit Notes, Xero said they are not even considering this, I've attached a screen shot of the post and my own response to it.
Xero just don't get that this is something that we the end user NEED!
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Andy Evans commented
As others have said over the years that this has been "In Development", it's a basic / fundamental accounting requirement that should have been included from the launch of Xero, and should have been at the top of the development priority list to add / put right. Instead, Xero continues to focus on adding glossy features that I suspect most users don't actually use or need (AI and analytics for example), and changing the user interface. Come on Xero, listen to your customers and put some effort and focus on getting this and other basic accounting features put right to make Xero more user friendly.
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Sarah Bevan commented
This would save a lot of time
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Bee Hesketh commented
There are so many 'Product Ideas' like this that should be a core feature not something that has to be suggested and chased. All the while prices keep getting hiked and useless AI features are added, but not the basic functions we have been asking for for years.
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Harvey Jones commented
How hard can it be!
This is a necessity and should have been addressed years ago. Come on Xero, sort it out!
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Tricia Drew commented
In development in March 2024??? As this has been requested pretty much since you started in the UK isn't it about time you dealt with it? No doubt that the developers have NO idea what a hassle it is currently. For those of us who use Xero on a day by day basis it is such an annoying waste of time. Sage had it perfectly. Time to step up and do some things to help us timewise instead of slow us down.
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Mark Tyler commented
Wow - stop wasting time on look - it’s all about content and functionality
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Valerie Hague commented
Come on Xero. This is really iimportant. The credit notes functionality is exceedingly poor compared with other bookkeeping systems. THIS WAS FIRST REQUESTED IN 2012!!!! You should not have to allocate a credit note against an invoice which then shows as an underpayment of the invoice on the remittance advice. You should be able to include a credit note in a batch payment without a silly error message saying "you can't pay a credit note". You should be able to select a credit note along with invoices in the bank reconciliation screen. Xero have got their priorities all wrong. Lets sort the basic functionality which affects EVERYBODY before adding bells and whistles that only a few will use.
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Annie Thorne commented
Any progress on this? I need to be able to account & reconcile for two invoice payments and a credit in a single transaction and can't see how this is possible unless I do them all individually which then doesn't reflect the actual line in the bank account. So frustrating
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Sonia Connon commented
We really need this addressed. It has been over Thirteen years since this feature was asked for!! It is time to get this feature priortised.
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Axis IT Consulting commented
Excellent.
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Amanda Vigar commented
Things like this are basic and need sorting because it makes the job easier! Most of what has been done recently doesn't!
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George Dima commented
Hi all, should we do this ourself. Make a Multi Tenant SaaS App to handle credit notes and payments.
🧱 Architecture Overview
1. Frontend (User Interface)
Web app where users can:
Connect their Xero account via OAuth 2.0.
View credit notes and payments.
Configure matching rules (e.g., auto-apply by date, amount, or supplier).
Approve or reject suggested matches.
2. Backend (Business Logic)
Handles:
Authentication and token management.
Fetching credit notes, bills, and payments from Xero.
Applying your custom logic to match credit notes to payments.
Creating journal entries or transactions in Xero via the API.
3. Database
Stores:
User accounts and Xero tokens.
Matching rules and preferences.
Logs of all actions for audit and rollback.
4. Xero API Integration
Uses:
GET /creditnotes, GET /payments, POST /journals, etc.
OAuth 2.0 for secure, per-user access.
Webhooks (optional) to react to new credit notes or payments in real time.
🔐 Multi-Tenant Considerations
Each user’s data is isolated and secured.
Tokens are stored encrypted.
Role-based access control (e.g., admin vs. viewer).
Optional: allow users to invite team members. -
Lydia Sun commented
Could you please allow credit notes to apply to the payment instead of to an invoice (payable).