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Hi Kevin

Thank you so much for replying, this is the first time I got a response for any product I released on beta so I'm very thankful 🙏

And thank you for saying there could be value, it means alot to me that I'm starting to understand what it means to help customers relieve their pain in their business.

I want to assure you that this app is very secure in that it uses the Oauth2 process provided by xero, which means you didn't actually have to log on directly from the app, it was probably the case that your weren't logged in to start with?. All that the process does is that it goes to your xero and asks for permissions like being able to read attachments etc. Also, the deployed app uses https which encrypts data going back and forth to the server.

I totally respect your decision and will take this on board to make further security improvements and announcements to allow the user to feel more at ease. I'll keep this place updated too and show screenshots if anyone is interested!

Thanks again 🙌

Hi user AA.

Thanks for creating the app to download the documents. I think you're on to a winner and once polished up, if there's enough interest, there's value in charging a small fee.

As a PSA to the community I'm reluctant to use this service however as it requires me to enter my Xero login details. I'm sure sure there's no malicious intent with what you've created but bad faith actors can do the same and take credential details and or do man-in-the-middle attacks to access documents.

Have a think on ways to put safeguards or security in place to make your solution a real winner :)

Cheers

Hey y'all 👋.

I created a prototype app that helps you download bill attachments (as an example) by month https://x-extentions.vercel.app/ , It's still a little buggy so apologies. Also, due to the rate limitations xero put, we can only request one attachment per second, so 60 attachments mean 60 seconds possibly.

I created an example feature for bill attachments, if enough people see it possibly saving them time, I can build the other resources and help you enjoy this app once more.

Let me know, thanks!

I have a client going through a 2 year audit. They have 6 bank accounts and needed the bank reconciliation report for each month.

6 accounts*12 months*2 years = 144 reports. We had to download each one. One at a time...

Please add this functionality.

Xero is useless for audits - basic functionality is missing and therefore will be cancelling and taking all clients off it as well.

Please could this important feature be added as a matter of urgency. Your nearest competitor (Quickbooks) has this feature and therefore it should be a priority for Xero and a matter of courtesy for loyal clients of Xero that wish to leave for their own specific reasons.

Does anyone know if you can mass download on Quickbooks?

This "product idea" is from 2013.
It was 'declined' in 2023 - did that take 10 years?
Now it's 11 years.

Would this be critical if I were not trying to leave Xero in response to the mess of 'new invoicing' and the mess I expect to happen with 'new' bills? Probably only if our tax agency came calling for an audit.

But now it is critical ...

I want to second the alternative: keep a non-productive version acceessible for people so they can access their history. This ought to be your responsiblity as it's not that we changed - YOU DID.

I cannot make your software work for me anymore.
Please let me take my stuff and leave.

When I export bills to .CSV it excludes the image files for receipts. This needs to be fixed.

You are simply using this as a strategy to make customers stick with you. It is clear and obvious as there is a lot of work involved to port out all the files/attachments individually. Frankly I think this approach is woeful and un-supportive! Using attachments and other Xero app has all kind of GDPR issues in the UK, plus it drives up the costs for SME's. This is really very, very unhelpful! You have had years to sort this and clearly have no plans to help your customers in this important area.

Agree that this should be a priority as numerous documents need to be downloaded from the files section for compliance purposes

Can you please recommend or suggest connected apps that can do this for us?

@Cara Cunniff

You can send the receipt to the client. You just have to tick a box for this (after you have attached the file to the invoice).

I cannot understand how when I submit an invoice with a receipt image to a client that Xero doesn't send this to the client with the images. This defeats much of the ease when the receipts are expenses. You assign the expense to the clients (not much good without the image - as it's proof) but don't actually send them. Very very limiting and a reason to change to provider.
This is a basic need when submitting expenses on an invoice!

It's clear from the comments below this is a critical requirement.

I would like to add my voice to this issue. I have a client whom is changing entities and will open another XERO account, however will need the attached bills for their industry as some areas, such as retention, etc may take 5 years to finalise. They have thousands of transactions, and the representative said we have to download everyone individually? We now either have to keep the XERO file open & pay two subscriptions, or cancel the subscription and then we still have to reapply when we need info & pay the subscription again. I was told by the representative that the client should have all of these anyway, but we are now going into a paperless society so they don't keep them, they scan & attach ! If you don't allow us to download, you should at least allow a read only file or backup option as such so we don't pay the subscription, but can still look in & get info but not enter anything.

I add my voice to the cacophony: we should be able to download all the attached PDFs from our file, and even better be able to download them from certain areas for certain date ranges. This is a serious limitation on the usefulness of attached documents for Bills in particular.

If a developer in your app store can make this happen, why can't you?

Further to that, why not contact one of those developers and buy their solution and implement it? The work is already done.

Or maybe even poach some of the software engineers from that team to work for you.

My point is that a solution exists; it's just not being integrated despite being a fairly common need in the finance realm.

This should now be a priority as files are often needed to be downloaded en mass for compliance purposes

I now have grave concerns about Xero software given their update today. As the need is very obvious, I suggest that anybody who has commented makes sure that the they have voted for this issue to be resolved and asked other collegues to do the same. From a review of the topics list it is currently number 11 on the list and I am sure vote number would increase dramatically if all users understood the legal implications.

Thousands of users have reported this as a critical feature.
In addition, for most jurisdictions, it's a legal and audit requirement as well as a client service expectation.
Xero should adjust its response to this request. We buy a license for book keeping software. If it can't perform basic tasks, such as exporting the records we have created,, we aren't getting what we pay for...