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This should be merged with
https://productideas.xero.com/forums/967115-invoices-quotes/suggestions/44960395-sales-invoices-issue-progress-payments-on-invoic
as they are effectively the same issue.

Agreed. No body cares about Xero being pretty, just functional.

I opened a ticket with Xero and through that they confirmed this is not something they are working on at all right now, which is incredibly disappointing and honestly feels pretty disrespectful. They're so busy with beautifying the dashboard and adding in useless AI that they can't fix a fundamental, and rather stupid, issue that was brought to their attention over three years ago. If this is significantly impacting your business (as it is mine), you might need to consider looking for alternative software.

This is becoming a significant issue for our business.

We take a deposit on virtually every booking, so our invoices are partially paid very early in the process. Customers regularly make changes after paying their deposit, which means we need to adjust quantities, pricing or other invoice details.

Having to remove/undo the payment, edit the invoice, then reapply and reconcile the payment simply to make a legitimate change is an unnecessarily cumbersome process.

This will become an even bigger problem for us from **1 October, when virtually all of our customers will be paying by credit card**. At that point, this limitation will affect almost every booking we process.

We understand the importance of maintaining an audit trail, but surely the answer is to record the amendment in the invoice history — not prevent the invoice from being amended.

Businesses across travel, accommodation, events and many other industries routinely take deposits. Being able to amend a partially paid invoice while retaining the payment and a full audit history should be basic functionality.

Please Xero, this really needs to be addressed.

If this is the only way of fixing the issue, I'm all for it.

This could be remedied by have the middle step that is missing. A SALES ORDER!
Create a quote; it is approved and turned into a sales order that is active. Deposits/multiple payments are applied, but you can still modify the contents while the work is in progress. Then, when work is complete and the sales order is finalized with any other changes, a final invoice is issued for the outstanding invoice. We used the same quote number/sales order number and invoice number on our last system and it worked great. Easy follow through, no chasing numbers to correspond and identified work in progress versus invoices outstanding to be collected on!

Three years is more than enough time to address a fundamental accounting workflow.

Requiring users to remove payments, edit an invoice, and then manually reapply every payment is not a feature. It is an unnecessary workaround that increases processing time, creates opportunities for errors, and adds frustration to what should be a simple task.

For those of us processing invoices every day, these extra steps compound into hours of lost productivity over the course of a year. Time spent working around software limitations is time not spent serving clients or running our businesses.

This request has been raised repeatedly over the years. It would be encouraging to see it move from the "requested" list to the development roadmap. Improving core accounting functionality should take precedence over cosmetic enhancements or new features that don't address everyday operational pain points.

Please prioritize the workflows that your users rely on every single day. Efficient accounting software should reduce administrative work, not create more of it.

Can someone from Xero advise when this issue will be corrected? Because if it's not on the agenda to be corrected by the end of the year I intend to change systems, and knowing sooner rather than later if I should be transferring clients would be good. Honestly, the most respectful thing you guys could do is at least let us know given how long this thread has been open.

We have to change every invoice as we require deposits on every job. We’re now having to look at using a different program that allows invoicing a portion (eg. 40%) of the quote, and automatically calculates the remaining amount to invoice upon completion of the job.

I agree! It's absurd that they have set this system up like this. It is too time consuming and it leaves room for error! XERO fix this asap!!!!!

Please make invoice amounts editable after a payment has been added.

I have wasted so much time removing payments to edit invoices and then re-doing payments (and reconciliation).

Preferably invoices would simply be editable without having to go to a menu and click edit too. Another massive time waster.

I absolutely agree, I don't want to have to remove a large number of allocations just to edit the reference.

That's depressing! :(

Do you realize that thread was opened in 2022... So much for the Squeaky wheel.

Please more people comment on this to boost the votes numbers so there is a better chance of something changing! Squeaky wheels get the oil!

100% agree!!. How many more people need to complain about this horrible feature before something is actioned?

At a minimum, references and line-item descriptions should remain editable on paid invoices, and this functionality should be reinstated for paid or refunded customer credit notes.

Accounting integrations and connected e-commerce platforms cannot always determine the correct account, tax rate or description for every invoice or credit-note line.

Some platforms also make it difficult to assign the correct tax treatment to every individual product or product type before the transaction is sent to Xero. This is particularly difficult where one order contains items with different GST treatments, or where an order is subsequently edited, discounted or partially refunded.

For example, when an order is edited in Shopify to apply a discount to a GST-free product, the integration may:

* apply the wrong GST treatment;
* describe the adjustment as “Surcharge adjustments”;
* enter the shipping line as a negative discount; and
* add a separate adjustment line to bring the credit note back to the correct total.

The final invoice or credit-note total may be correct, while the individual lines, descriptions, accounts and tax rates are wrong. Our integration fortunately sends a notification when it has had to estimate or guess the treatment, allowing us to identify the affected transactions.

Xero should allow users to fully edit the line items of a paid invoice or credit note while keeping the following fields locked:

* total transaction amount;
* transaction date;
* contact; and
* payment, allocation and bank account used.

As long as the settled total remains exactly the same, users should be able to:

* edit line descriptions;
* edit the reference;
* change accounts;
* change the tax rate on individual lines;
* change line amounts and quantities;
* delete unnecessary or artificial lines; and
* add replacement or correcting lines.

This would allow an integration-generated transaction to be corrected accurately without changing the amount paid or refunded, disturbing the payment allocation or undoing a correct bank reconciliation.

For a small number of affected transactions, directly editing the invoice or credit note would also be much simpler and more efficient than having to create and run a complex series of Find and Recode searches. Find and Recode is useful for correcting large groups of transactions with the same issue, but it is unnecessarily cumbersome where only a few invoices or credit notes contain different combinations of incorrect lines, tax rates or descriptions.

At the very least, references and line-item descriptions should remain editable after an invoice or credit note has been paid. This would allow a user to add a clear note identifying what needs to be corrected later. The affected invoices or credit notes could then be located in a monthly Find and Recode review by searching the reference or description, making it possible to recode similar errors in bulk.

Without this minimum level of editing, a user may know that a credit note has the wrong GST treatment or account coding but have no practical way to identify the required correction when reviewing the affected transactions later in Find and Recode.

Where a user attempts to change the total, date, contact or payment details, Xero could continue to require the payment to be removed or adjusted. However, when those locked fields remain unchanged, there is no reason to require Remove & Redo merely because the internal composition of the transaction needs to be corrected.

Any changes could continue to be recorded in History & Notes, preserving a clear audit trail of the original integration-created lines and the subsequent corrections.

This functionality is increasingly important in an e-commerce accounting environment. Integrations frequently have to estimate the purpose, tax treatment or account coding of discounts, refunds, shipping adjustments and other order changes. Locking all line-item details once the total has been paid prevents users from efficiently correcting known integration errors.

The payment should lock the amount and transaction identity that were settled, not permanently lock incorrect descriptions, tax treatments, accounts or artificial line-item structures created by an integration.

Xero currently requires the cash refund or payment to be removed and the bank transaction reconciled again merely to correct a reference or line description. These fields are commonly populated incorrectly by Shopify and other e-commerce integrations—for example, with generic descriptions such as “Surcharge adjustments”.

Changing the reference or description does not alter the contact, credit-note amount, GST, account coding, allocation or payment. These non-financial fields should remain editable while all financial fields remain locked.

Credit notes should work consistently with bills, sales invoices and supplier credit notes, where the tax rate, account and amounts are correctly locked after payment, but references and descriptions can still be corrected. In an e-commerce integration environment, references and descriptions are often entered incorrectly, guessed by the platform or left too generic, so users need access to correct them or add meaningful details.

Requiring Remove & Redo for a purely descriptive correction creates unnecessary work, disrupts an otherwise correct bank reconciliation and provides no additional accounting or audit protection.

yes agree! the fact that we have been complaining about this issue since Jun 12, 2023 is frustrating as nothing has been done in over 3 years!

Many industries, including ours, rely on deposit and progress payments, and variations after a partial payment are a normal part of business.

It's difficult to understand why Xero still hasn't addressed this. The current process of removing payments, editing or recreating invoices, and reallocating payments is unnecessarily time-consuming and feels incredibly outdated.

A modern accounting platform should be able to support invoice variations while maintaining a complete audit trail and accounting integrity.