Upload Bills - Populated Fields with relevant information
Ability to Select and Edit Auto Populated Fields
Recent updates to Xero’s bill upload functionality have introduced several inefficiencies in the auto population process.
Description Field:
Xero now pre populates the description field when bills are uploaded. The suggested text is not fit for purpose, as it includes unnecessary information—such as supplier name, the organisation’s own name, and invoice dates—which are already captured in other designated fields. In addition, the description field is restricted to a single line, resulting in all invoice line items being grouped together regardless of tax rate or account coding. This requires users to overwrite the auto populated text and manually add multiple lines to ensure correct coding and tax allocation.
Total Field:
The behaviour of the total field has also changed. Previously, Xero imported the actual invoice total. It now imports the total and then automatically adds VAT, switching the “Amounts are” setting to Tax Exclusive by default. Although this can be manually changed back to Tax Inclusive, the total does not update accordingly and must also be manually corrected.
Supplier Contact Field:
Accuracy in the pre population of the “From” (contacts) field has decreased. Xero is now frequently assigning invoices to incorrect contacts or defaulting to “no contact,” even when invoices originate from regular suppliers.
Impact and Required Changes:
Collectively, these changes have significantly increased the amount of manual data entry and verification required, undermining the intended efficiency of auto population features.
To restore accurate and efficient invoice processing, the following would be necessary:
• An option to disable or customise the pre populated description field.
• A rollback to the previous logic used for populating invoice totals and supplier contacts.
These adjustments would allow users to maintain correct invoice entry without unnecessary manual intervention.
Lorraine Glennie
shared this idea
Thanks for bringing this feedback around the information being populated in the upload bills feature Lorraine, I can see that you have raised this with our Support team and they have looked into this and raised this with our Product team so they can investigate. This is not how the feature should be behaving so we appreciate you bringing this to us. Moving forward you will get any further updates on the feature on the case you raised with the Support team.
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Samantha Gibson
commented
I agree wholeheartedly with Lorraine - the pre-populated description is no good for us either.
Xero can do all these pointless things but cannot do something like turn off Auto Pay Run Journal or at least put it into drafts so we can have the option to post it or not. -
Kerry Cummins
commented
Totally agree, Lorraine. We are seeing those same issues, especially with the manual work now required. The summary in the description field isn't necessary, as that detail is already on the invoice. Also, the Invoice Number field isn't as accurate as before - it occasionally pulls the Purchase Order number by mistake.