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This would be make a big difference to us if you can up a second invoice reference box on. And it looks like there is a few others that think the same. I hope this is something xero can get sort soon.

14 YEARS to get on the radar.

Done a bit of groundwork.

Can't commit to development.

A single little field/text box that every. other. accounting system. has.

A standard, essential functionality. not bells and whistles no one asked for (and probably no one uses). We are talking about basics here.

Honestly, I am gobsmacked by Xeros response to this. Lost for words.

Thank you Kelly. It is great to hear that after 14yrs, yes, this request was made in 2012, that you have finally completed some groundwork and it's on the teams radar, but, you cannot commit to developing (adding) the extra field. A field that requires no separate functionality except to be available in reports. An extra field like the one that already exists in Invoices.

This is a critical feature. It should have the fields "Invoice Number", and "Reference". Then within the lines of the invoice there should be a way to draw down on a Purchase Order and list which PO-Number each was drawn from. And there should be communication between invoices and POs. If I delete an invoice that drew down on a PO, it should ask me if I want to reinstate those lines back into the PO. At the moment, the invoice/PO functions are so primitive, it's basically useless.

Could do with 2 reference boxes when entering purchase bills otherwise the system doesn't flag up a duplicate. If I enter both figures in the sane box.

When receipting a purchase order to a bill, it says reference should say supplier invoice number, an additional field that show what the purchase order was used. Currently the purchase order populates into the reference field, we then have to copy it to a separate line at the bottom of the bill so we can see which order it relates to.
The supplier card should have another column of the purchase order no the bill relates to so can been seen a view instead of having to click into the bill to check.

I completely understand ideas have to be assessed to warrant developer time, but this feature seems like such an important addition that most businesses would need a secondary field for a PO/ project number/ alternative reference. Slightly frustrated if the comments are right, that this has been around for years with no progress - seems to be a common theme with a lot of my gripes about Xero!

The same fields need to be available on both sales invoices and purchase bills. At present, purchase bills do not include “Reference” and “Invoice” fields, so we are using Tracking Categories as a workaround.

However, this creates several issues. If Tracking Categories are archived to limit the number of references, they are removed from reports, which prevents meaningful analysis. In addition, references from prior years cannot be easily archived in bulk, and some may still be in use in the current year.

Overall, this workaround is time-consuming and inefficient.

Many thanks

In xero sales invoices have an invoice number and an invoice reference field while purchase bills only have an invoice reference field, which we use for the invoice number. It would be great to add an invoice number field to purchase bills so that the two work in the same way and we can use the invoice reference for something else.

That would be incredibly usefull to us as we currently need to use the reference field for an order number from our website, in that field.

Xero have blatantly ignore this basic functionality for years. they must be the only accounting software in existence that doesn't have a second reference field in bills. Having to add a PO number to the end of an invoice number negates the detect duplicates feature. someone might write PO 123, or PO123, or PO#123 or PO #123. Plus it looks messy and forces me to use functions in excel to sort everything out (text after, text before, left, right etc) when i export data.

It is essential to be able to search bills by the PO number because sometimes a PO is split accross several bills

The people designing xero aren't day to day users and are too busy faffing about with ai nobody wants or asked for. We would rather have a second reference field in bills. how hard can it be?

Yes, a real pain in the bum and an issue which has been around for ever. We use project numbers and the only way to ensure everything is cross referenced, especially when exporting the data, is to add this to the reference field with the project title and add the project number again as an empty item entry in the invoice or bill. As mentioned the input duplication is prone to error.

Xero when will you be implementing this?? It is already on the sales invoices, so why not on the bills?
This is an essential part on billing, we NEED this now!!

Not having a second reference field available is actually causing duplicates to happen as we have to add the 2nd reference we need (project name) on to the end of the bills ID which we may enter "9895 - Stanton Road" the first time but the second person may write "9895 - Stanton Rd" then Xero duplicate checker doesn't identify they're actually the same bill and they both end up getting paid.

We definitely need a Second reference field! It is infuriating to have to add our ref to the end of the Invoice Number. We work on Job numbers, so an easy visual is needed, instead of having to click into each Bill to ensure it has been allocated correctly to the right job.

So it does Allen! What's even sadder is that this 'idea' has been with Xero since 2012!!! 14 years!! Xero don't care. The amount of changes they have made to views and analytics but not making this simple change is ridiculous. I have taken my comments to Facebook before, was told to get back here 😅

The sad thing is that this field actually exists and is used by Xero if the process starts the creation of a purchase order rather than just entering a supplier invoice

Xero a lot of your client base desperately needs this feature. I know for my business, by xero not having this feature it really creates a lot of manual process

i was thinking the same thing Erin. Is anyone at Xero actually reading our comments as this has been going on for years!

Does anyone know how to get this seen by Xero product team? This seems like such a basic function. I'm sure no one reviews these ideas . Maybe if we all keep posting new comments it will get traction