Enter your idea

@Sam - Have you tried following the instructions per attached?

Essentially you will need to save the manifest file on your local drive somewhere, save that folder location as a trusted folder per excel's trust settings, then add the add-in by going to Insert → My Add-ins → [Folder where you saved the manifest folder] and then add the file.

Once added, you should see the ScheduleXL as an Add-In you can open. From there, you just need to sign in to Xero.

Apologies it's a bit tricky. Since I haven't published to the Microsoft App store, it is a bit of a manual process to do the initial setup.

If you need further help with setting it up, my contact email is at the bottom of the website.

Thanks

@ruvan... can you guide me accordingly please.
I tried opening from excel directly.. i hv latest 365 version.

@Mark - I managed to build a basic working prototype for excel. It's an add-on which allows you to manage all your Prepayments and Deferred Revenue schedules and can generate monthly postings for Xero. Way it works is you choose based on filters invoice lines to download from Xero and essentially each Invoice line becomes a schedule. For each schedule you can set the Start, End Date, Spread method, Recognition and Balance Sheet Clearing account etc. Also allows you to make mid-schedule adjustments such as changing the end date or Recognition Account. Quite basic at the moment but keen to hear if this solves any existing pain points you have and if so, happy to further develop this into something that could be used at scale.
Here is the link to the prototype (just need to download the Excel add-in manifest and add it to your excel): https://excel-schedule-web.vercel.app/

Also anyone else is also free to try this, but I do request you try this on a Demo company and not a real one for now. Thanks!

@mark
I was talking about a third party software that connects to XERO Purchases and reads the purchases invoice transaction lines, and then you split as a prepayment over a period. (not linked to Hubdoc).

@carl
1. Agreed, but on XERO its not doable.
2. Prepayments are fine, as if you posted a yearly insurance invoice in Purchases, then you can split it by 12 from the system, and post journal.
3. Re Accruals, these will need to be posted manually of course.

@Ruvan
Agreed re adjustments, but these things are normally required in any case.

So, out of internal need, we were working on developing an Accrual and Prepayment module. Due to the recent changes in XERO in terms of the API scope connections, we have to reconfigure the entire API data transfer between XERO & our SAAS, so will take a few months.

We have just started using Dext for entering some bills and it can recognize prepayments and create the journals

however it doesn't work on foreign currency transactions so I will still have to do those manually in a spreadsheet.

@Sam - The reason I suggest an excel tool as opposed to a web app is the flexibility it gives you. Web apps are great if you don't need to adjust anything or have a standard way to adjust the numbers but an excel add-in would allow you to make adjustments in a more flexible way + allow you to do things such as add additional supporting tabs with additional workings for those ad-hoc scenarios which feed into your schedules. You could also build some AI logic into the excel based tool as to do as you say but I would still suggest you have ultimate control over what gets posted to Xero hence you keep that control in excel.

My wishlist:

1. Ability to add service start and end dates to invoices/bills

2. Reporting option to recognize/accrue revenue and expenses evenly (straight-line) across the service period for those invoices/bills

This would make it much easier to get more accurate monthly management reporting without needing manual accrual journals.

@Sam - but then you are talking about changing Hubdoc, or the new scan an item(s) in to Bills in Xero - realistically - will that happen?
This has been an open item for so long, without traction - and it would have such benefits - @Xero - comment please?

@mark @Ruvan

Wouldn't a web app be better than excel.. that can read the invoices posted in purchases.. and AI detect the periods it needs to prepay on? Like Insurance, subscriptions etc... and automatically split on 12 months?

@Ruvan Fernando - that sounds an excellent idea, with the excel being integrated with Xero. Happy to test the functionality.

Would anyone be open to the idea of having an excel add-in that can manage your accruals/prepayment schedules/deferred revenue schedules etc that can sync with Xero? Happy to develop something if there is interest for such a utility.

Also just to be clear, its also the revenue side. Unearned revenue, or revenue received in advance. For example, customer pays an annual invoice, you want to recognise 1/12th over each month.
so Unearned revenue, prepayments, accruals. they are all different things but work exactly the same way with the connection between invoice / bill and the journals. Just didn't want to see this go live without the revenue / customer side

Another vote to include this. Coming from Sage to Xero and having to keep Prepayments omn XLS is a PITA. Sage have a really good recording
model and for me like many others, it's really needed.

When we invoice customer could Xero increase the upload file storage capacity so we can attach PDF files and an Excel spreadsheet together with the invoice.

Absolutely critical feature needed in xero. everyone has to use spreadsheets to get around this. the only people using xero that don't need this are very small businesses that operate on full cash accounting. I imagine this is a very small percentage of the xero users. I have been using xero since 2009 and this has always been my number one issue.

very essential feature - please develop ASAP
Many thanks

Xero's usual "We see that this is a sensible and much-wanted addition, however we're going to ignore it in favour of tinkering with other changes that nobody asked for". Hope we get more useless AI integration soon!

This would make life so much easier, as has been said many times in this thread, it is time consuming and frustrating using spreadsheets and journals. If QBO can do it Xero should be able to too!

Essential feature!

I think a recorded video for accruals and prepayments will be useful and how it will look on the accounts after all. I worked on the system where all you do is post an invoice and the dates it covers. The system would identify the dates and would post the invoice spread among those dates evenly by itself. It would credit the cost and debit the preapyment and so on over future months.