How could Xero improve the homepage?

This is what I came to say. I find have 4 columns chaotic and find it hard to locate information. Its far too busy. I'd like large bank account widgets in a single scrollable column, or double at most. It would be fine with one bank account but with several, 4 columns is awful!

I am reposting Eric Dunn's comment as I agree with it:
'Please allow the widgets to be organised in columns - currently it automatically arranges them in rows. OR allow the auto arrangement to be turned off so I can put them where I want.'

I am copying Steven Mallender's comment as I totally agree:
'Allow Widgets to be ordered into Columns.
My preference as below; but at least then everyone knows where to find a specific Widget - not in some random pool like it is now.
Column1 = Bank accounts;
Column2 = Tasks, invoices to chase, bills to pay;
Column3 = Business Performance.
(I have 30+ (multi-currency) bank accounts and currently there's no point trying to find them on the new Homepage).

Agreed. I want to fix the position of the widgets, possibly with 'sections' so the banks accounts only ever take up the first 2 columns and the rest of the widgets can take up whatever is left. This i because I have a wide screen, but sometimes use a narrower screen and when I swap between the 2, the position of each of the widgets cahnges, which is confusing!

Based on this, I would like the widgets locked so they don't move when you resize the page.
One of the businesses I use has a lot of accounts and as I change the size of the page, they move, making it trickier to spot the one I want quickly.

The new homepage layout feels very cluttered.

For clients who have transitioned to the new homepage, the first thing I do is remove unnecessary widgets — typically leaving only bank accounts and invoices & bills visible.

However, the current layout forces widgets to fill the top row first. For example, if there are three bank account widgets and both invoices and bills widgets enabled, the system will display four widgets across the top row and push the remaining widget to a second row.

There is no option to leave space in the top row or manually group similar widgets together. This makes the homepage feel visually unbalanced and contributes to a cluttered appearance.

Allowing users to customise widget positioning (e.g., manually arranging or grouping widgets) would significantly improve clarity and usability.

Please make it so I can choose how many columns and rows I have, or just allow me to keep the original homepage.

I logged on today using my laptop and discovered the home page displays differently on different devices - rather confusing to say the least. Could you fix this so it stays the same on all devices used please?

Huge thanks to Andrew G for this improved custom CSS (which is well worth updating for anyone else using it). It now functions exactly the way I'd like to see it implemented in the product (aside from the left-right sorting issue that they mentioned).

If anyone needs help enabling it in Firefox, I followed these instructions through Step 4 and it worked perfectly (noting that the file to update is userContent.css, not userChrome.css). https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/wiki/index/tutorials

Regarding the new Homepage in general - all I can say is that I've fully made my peace with the new look (and actually quite prefer the "quantized" widget sizes), but this sorting and especially scaling behavior remains 100% inexcusable.

The fact that people are talking about CSS hacks to fix this surely should tell you something, you've made something worse in the need for endless "improvement".

Please please give us the option for 2 columns or to use the old home page permanently. Why get rid of it? Then you can be A/Bing pages.

Hi Kelly.

Thanks for the notification that you have no plans to fix the issue that we all have.

As has already been discussed below, the screen size "FIX" is no fix at all.

It is also immensely annoying that every time you log in you have to change the view back to the original. The "NEW" layout is absolutley awful, and nobody who has ever used Xero likes it.

Why do you (Xero) insist on changing things that work into things that don't? (Not expecting a reply, as usual.)

I just posted this in another thread, if you're comfortable installing a CSS addon/plugin to apply your own custom CSS to the Xero site, you can use this hack to fix the number of columns.

Choose either 2 or 3 columns based on your need (delete the lines you do not require):

@-moz-document domain(go.xero.com) {

/* EITHER: Fix columns to 3 columns regardless of screen size */
.dashboard-template-beta-grid { grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr) !important; max-width: 1360px !important; }

/* OR Fix columns to 2 columns regardless of screen size */
.dashboard-template-beta-grid { grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr) !important; max-width: 900px !important; }
}

This will ensure that your fix-column dashboard remains centred in the screen, with the fixed column count.

NB: For anyone using my previous hack to fix the number of columns, I've updated/improved the coding here to work better. Keep in mind you'll need to ensure that every screen resolution (2, 3, and 4 columns) has the correct layout saved as Xero now remembers the saved layout based on screen size.

This does not unfortunately change the ordering left-to-right, which means it does not fix/allow us to have some columns longer in length than other columns (meaning you still cannot have all 50 bank accounts in the first column only).

100% agree. I am faced with TWELVE different widgets when viewing on my monitor, from border to border of the screen. Absolute information overload. I need the ability to reduce the number of columns. I don't understand how after all this time you guys don't seem to properly test what you release...

Allow Widgets to be ordered into Columns.
My preference as below; but at least then everyone knows where to find a specific Widget - not in some random pool like it is now.
Column1 = Bank accounts;
Column2 = Tasks, invoices to chase, bills to pay;
Column3 = Business Performance.
(I have 30+ (multi-currency) bank accounts and currently there's no point trying to find them on the new Homepage).

Please allow the widgets to be organised in columns - currently it automatically arranges them in rows. OR allow the auto arrangement to be turned off so I can put them where I want.

The new home page wraps columns and assumes (incorrectly) that I want four columns.

The classic screen was superior.

Please allow the user to arrange the dashboard in two columns, central on the screen. The columns can then be configured with my selected widgets.

Widgets should remain static once placed and should not wrap or snap to alternate locations. I.e. A simple grid.

The new layout is really confusing because the widgets move when the screen changes size so unless you always have Xero full screen they are never where I expect them to be. I don't need to be hunting for widgets on my Home Screen.

Please can you make it possible for me to anchor some wedges to the left hand side of my screen so they always appear in a column on the left margin. I want my bank accounts to appear in a column on the left, and then the other widgets can flow around if you wish in any space to the right or below. At the moment it is stressful to use.

The new dashboard view appears to order by row, rather than column, which means that if you drag a widget from B3 to B1, A2 suddenly moves somewhere else rather than everything in column B just moving down. For me, it super unintuitive. If it needs to be responsive then stacking columns would be work better for my needs.

Please leave classic view available until the layout works properly.

The new homepage doesn't allow you to drag and drop modules into any order/position - it forces you to fill the screen left to right. Previously I could have our the bank account details (and their $ totals) in a lower position that was visible only by scrolling down. Now it is always there, and also visible to anyone else near my screen. This new layout won't let me move it down/away unless I put in other (unnecessary) modules to fill that gap, which would then force the bank details into the spot where I'd like to have it.

Thanks for the update.

I can only reiterate Elliot's remarks below. On the face of it, this sounds to miss the mark, and won't address the concerns we have with the widgets getting scrambled when customising the dashboard, nor when resizing the browser on any given display (e.g. when pinning to the left-side of the screen and reducing browser width by half).

If this update remembers the layout on a per "mode" basis (i.e. 2, 3 and 4 columns, rather than actual browser/screen width) then that's something, but still doesn't help people who only want/need a 2 column layout no matter the browser/screen width.

Overall this feels like the design is being pushed by a technical development team rather than end user scenario and usability analysts.

As an aside, you say you're going to monitor this - how do you propose to do that? You have no visibility if people are using the CSS hacks I shared earlier to fix the number of columns on the dashboard. Are you monitoring screen size, AND browser window size - both or just one? For example, if I'm using my normal browser size then pin to the left-side of the screen, will you see the change in # of columns behaviour in your monitoring when I'm using the same screen?

Edit - I tried saving a layout, and can confirm it remembers per-mode (i.e. 2, 3 or 4 columns) not by screen or browser window size. The problem that still remains is that there are no "blank" or "filler" widgets for the unwanted 3rd and/or 4th column, meaning that this is still problematic when we're trying to maintain consistency of widget placement for our own performance/efficiency when using multiple monitor/screen/browser widths. In effect we have to remember a different layout for every screen/monitor width we use, rather than having a consistent layout tailored to our needs.