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23 results found
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2 votes
Appreciate your feedback, Martin. I can assure you throughout the build of new invoicing we have engaged and tested out features with many different users. To keep customers informed throughout we have shared blog posts and regularly update our Xero Central page with what's been delivered and what's to come.
Being such a widely used feature, we have focused on features that suit majority of our customers needs. We appreciate some customers still want to see more development and we are continuing to enhance this new invoicing experience.
Our products teams have conducted lots of research and testing to refine deliveries, and Xero Product Ideas here is another great way for us to understand what matters most to our customers - As you noted, we are listening and keeping users updated as developments progress with the status updates.
We understand our customers would like to be more involved as we…
An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment 
Martin Danger
commented
And another here with 639 votes: https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198-for-small-businesses/suggestions/47714132-new-invoicing-reduce-number-of-steps-and-clicks
where the user states that the wonderful new invoicing is actually increasing how long it takes to do their work "New invoicing has introduced more clicks, taps, steps at almost every level.
Please remove the added friction as it increases processing time."And another user states in response to Xero's 'we are doing great and here's what we will do soon but haven't done yet' message:
"How about you FIX the BUGS before telling us what's coming?
I reported a serious bug to Xero Support in January 24 - ITS STILL NOT FIXED!!!!
Bug - When copying a Purchase Order to a NEW INVOICE it copies the items Purchase price rather than the Sales Price of the item. (Old invoicing works correctly)
The first time I encountered this bug, a customer had to call and tell me I had invoiced them several thousands of ££££ to little!!!
So now I have many more clicks and Invoice anxiety ensuring Im using the correct sales price rather than trusting Xero to put the correct info in.
Come on Xero... FIX THE BUGS!"How hard did the team research/ test new invoicing if they let this bug through?
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
For an example of how well Xero's "products teams have conducted lots of research and testing to refine deliveries" approach has worked, see the following "product idea" with 549 votes so far: https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198-for-small-businesses/suggestions/47697230-new-invoicing-make-the-history-notes-the-same
where the user states
"Please leave the history of an invoice EXACTLY as it was in the classic invoicing."
AND
"I really don't understand why so many important features from the classic invoicing has been omitted."How does this correspond with the answer given by Kelly? Is she even talking about the same application?
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
And this "I encourage anyone that would like to help with this to sign up to our research panel."
Not only do users now have to do Xero's support work for them, we come up with ideas and help them make decisions too. I'm sure these positions are paid positions right?
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Kelly, given that Xero has done all "research and testing to refine deliveries" and still, the first 5 pages of product ideas are littered with "ideas" that are actually requests to bring back functionality that existed beforehand, Xero may want to assess whether what they did before implementing new invoicing actually worked.
And what the **** are "deliveries"? Just use normal language. If you are a transport company, you deliver things, sure. If you write accounting software, you don't deliver anything. You might change features, add new features, change the workflow etc. But 'deliveries'???
Xero's answer sounds great if it were not for the results that the process produced.
Xero's answer is also a prime example of the change in Xero's approach to communicating with users. It mirrors that of media trained politicians. Keep saying positive things, never admit any errors, if you can't say anything good, then say nothing.
Just look at Xero's response - it does not say that Xero removed features that are now being asked to be put back even though that is so plainly evident. No apology is made for taking important features away. In fact, it's like Xero is saying that the features that were removed weren't being used by the majority of users, so it's your fault for not being in the popular group.
When I say that what is needed is "more honest communication", what I mean is less of this type of pre-scripted and authorised response and more honesty about what is actually happening. Lets make it clear - new invoicing implementation was poor. If Xero thinks it went well, then why are they considering so many of the "ideas" which are actually old features that were removed. Xero's words are not commensurate with their actions. Just be honest.
Martin Danger
shared this idea
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14 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
How do these dates this work?
1 July 2024 - Sam Gray shares his idea.
22 May 2024 - Alan Cherwinski comments on it.Over a month before Sam shares his idea, Alan Cherwinski comments on it?
Either way, such a simple change, 4 months on, no change that I can see.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Xero does go on about this procedure saying that they won't rush things because they want to get things right. It would be good if Xero would share their procedure for making changes. Because, as we see once again, that procedure lets through some very basic errors.
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16 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Amazing how you tell Xero about the problem, they acknowledge it as a problem but because you told the "wrong" person, Xero can't do anything about it unless you spend more of your time repeating in this product ideas section what you have already told them. Why is it that users are made to do this work? If I have told Xero about this, then Xero knows about it. There shouldn't be a need for me to repeat myself. How about Xero staff do it? After all, it is us users who are paying Xero. We pay them, therefore, they do the work, not us.
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330 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
From and including: Tuesday, 22 January 2013
To, but not including Monday, 18 November 2024Result: 4318 days
Or 11 years, 9 months, 27 days excluding the end date.
Or 141 months, 27 days excluding the end date.Come on Xero, either say you aren't doing it or give us a date by which time the feature will be ready. Don't keep everyone hanging like this. It's really frustrating and quite frankly, it's an immature way of dealing with the issue.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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767 votes
Hi everyone, a year on from my last engagement we wanted to provide an update for you all here.
As many will be across we're in the midst of making a lot of iterations and improvements to new invoicing leading up to the retirement of classic invoicing in September (2024).
We have a fair amount of work lined up in the teams schedule over the coming months and to give an indication there isn't any committed plans around a function to add interest to invoices.
That said, we do have a team that have picked up and are considering how we might solve this with the technology in new invoicing - It's early days on this yet, but I'll share if there's any progress on this for you all here.
In the meantime, as has been shared by others over time there are a few ways you could accomplish this…
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Xero, act courageously. Either say "No, this is not something we will do." or say "Yes, we will do this and we will have it done by DATE."
Keeping things like this open speaks to a weak character. It looks like an organisation that doesn't want to upset anyone but also doesn't want to do the work. Just be honest. Either do it or don't do it. Just pretend that there is no option in between these two.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
From and including: Thursday, 29 March 2012
To, but not including Wednesday, 13 November 2024Result: 4612 days
It is 4612 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date.Or 12 years, 7 months, 15 days excluding the end date.
Or 151 months, 15 days excluding the end date.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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353 votesMartin Danger
supported this idea
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620 votes
Hi everyone, as another step toward improving history of new invoicing you'll find you'll now see an entry when an invoice is sent, and the email address it has been sent to.
We appreciate this is something we've heard a fair amount of feedback on and we hope helps in your journey to using new invoicing.
We still have more enhancements on the way for history and I'll be back again when more updates land.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
An update to my xero support case about this issue.
1. it's not a bug.
2. the system automatically unmarks the invoice as sent when a user approves them.
3. the invoice history creates an entry saying that the user manually unmarked the invoice as sent.
4. the invoice history entries are accurate.Seriously, that's what I have been told, in the same conversation and in the same paragraph. The invoice history entries are accurate. The invoice history entry shows a manual action taken by a user. That entry was created because the system did something automatically, not the user.
Do the support staff comprehend the words that they say? All of those sentences can't be true at the same time. I feel like I am talking to a con-artist (or a politician). I feel like the truth is far less important to xero than our subscription fees.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
@Annie Thorne
I asked xero support about this, that is, if you approve an invoice without sending it, xero history shows that you unmarked the invoice as sent. Even though you didn't do that. It isn't a "system generated" history entry, it's attributed to the user that approved the invoice.Xero support has confirmed that this behaviour, of creating an entry in histroy showing a user performed an action that they did not perform, xero have confirmed that this is the intended behaviour of the system. It is not a bug.
They seem to care very little about ensuring the accuracy of the history entries - no apology is made, no plans to fix (because it isn't a bug), no acknowledgement that allowing false entries devalues the reliability of all history entries, not just these ones.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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89 votesMartin Danger
supported this idea
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36 votes
Hi everyone, we appreciate seeking urgent help, however right here you're in Xero Product Ideas. This is where you can join and vote on ideas for change at Xero, this is not a direct line to support. This is a public forum where anything you post is visible to others - Please keep this in mind when sharing your details.
While we don't have an inbound number you can contact our Xero Support team, you can reach them anytime by raising a case through the Contact Xero Support tile found at the bottom of most pages throughout Xero Central.
If you can provide a little detail on your questions or what you're needing help with we'll be bale to get you in touch with someone with the best skills to help, and generally our specialists are happy to arrange a phone call at a time that suits you.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
No Kelly, you can't "reach them anytime by raising a case..."
Seriously, if "reaching someone" means sending them an email or something and then waiting for them to get back to you, if that means "reaching someone" then what does "making a request" mean?
You can't reach, call, talk to, or even reach out to, support 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You can send a request for support to call you back. That's it. That's the only thing you can do 24/7.
By Xero's english, I can "reach" my doctor for medical care 24/7 because I can send them a request to see them, and I can do that at any time.
How can you say those words when they are plainly untrue?
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370 votesMartin Danger
supported this idea
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741 votes
Hi everyone, some time on since my last update I wanted to give you more of an idea of the work we have going on to help reduce the number of steps and actions in new invoicing. Along with the changes mentioned in my last update, we've since released a change to the view of an invoice to shift details back into their own columns (similar to classic), while a small change we know it's improved visibility for some of our customers.
We also have other work in development atm that’ll further help here like a new line item grid when editing your invoice - wrapped up in this we’ll be introducing changes you’ve been asking for like the ability to create a new tracking option or account code without having to navigate away from the invoice, we’re increasing the number of items that you can view from the drop…
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
@Claire Barning - sounds like Xero's support staff are using you (and me and other users) to work out what the problem is. Gone are the days when the person that came to fix something, knew how to fix it and didn't need nor want you in the way. Nowadays, us users are de facto Xero employees, unpaid though. Think about that.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Seeing Xero say things like "hearing about the differing flows and how many customers enter data when invoicing" makes me wonder how much effort Xero made when deciding to create new invoicing.
And the "ideas" listed there, at least 4 of them are not ideas, they are deleted features that used to exist. When did Xero make it clear that their new invoicing thing would be removing these features and when did they give reasons why they were doing this?
If they had done this and listened to users, 1) users would have saved time by not having to lobby Xero to reinstate features and 2) Xero would have saved quite a bit of money by not writing new code to remove the features and then writing more code to reinstate them.
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316 votes
Hi community, thank you for your engagement and sharing how you'd like us to evolve roles for customers using Xero. User roles impact all areas of the product, there are many considerations we must factor in when assessing how to solve for majority of our customers needs - As you can see there is a large range of ideas for different roles shared by customers in Product Ideas.
We’re conducting research on the current landscape and how we might approach some of the most predominant needs in roles for our customers. To be upfront, the discovery of this work will be long running and there'll be multiple phases of research and forms of engagement with users that’ll help shape the path ahead in this space.
We’d like to invite you, our community to be part of this research and discovery. This may involve interviews and sharing further feedback through direct…An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
In another example of how Xero communicates with its users by gaslighting them... I logged a support case about this issue. I was told that giving only two options for user permissions was a security feature that protected data privacy.
How allowing a user with either very limited access or full access and nothing in between is supposed to enhance data privacy, well, that wasn't explained. Xero staff just say what they have been told to say, even if it makes no sense. And when you ask them to explain it, they respond with words that explain nothing.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
". User roles impact all areas of the product, there are many considerations we must factor in when assessing how to solve for majority of our customers needs - As you can see there is a large range of ideas for different roles shared by customers in Product Ideas."
One thing that is common to all these comments is the ability to choose what level of access to give a user.
The ability to limit a user's access to what is necessary is a basic security practice. There is nothing to research here - the administrator should be able to pick what level of access a user gets.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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52 votes
Thanks for sharing this here, Olga. Appreciate the needs in being able to approve these sort of 0.00 invoices in your Xero organisation. I can confirm this is something our team are looking at so I'll keep you updated of any change of this, here.
For the meantime, though I appreciate it may slightly change your flow you should find you can approve these type of invoices from the Draft list of your invoices. If you have a few of these waiting you'll be able to Approve these all at once to save a little time.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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267 votes
Hi team, as you may have noticed we've made a change to the Invoice Date and Due Date fields that now allows you to type in these fields rather than having to select a date from the calendar drop down. It does still require entering delimiters between day month and year such as a '.' or '/' (we understand there are a few situations when entering US date formats and are continuing to look into this).
We're working on also adding this functionality to the Payment date, and I'll keep you in the know of when this is made available, here.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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428 votes
Hi everyone, to keep you updated on this idea work in this space will provide the ability to add a new blank row to your invoice one at a time. Once added you'll also have the ability to drag and drop the row to where you'd like it placed in your invoice, which we know some customers use to help format their invoices and space lines out.
I appreciate that some customers have mentioned wanting to add multiple blank rows at once, and want to be open that this isn't planned with this release.
Being under development atm, we plan to have this to you all before classic invoicing is retired and I'll be back as soon as it's out to let you know, here.
Martin Danger
supported this idea
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279 votesMartin Danger
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229 votesMartin Danger
supported this idea
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4 votes
Like your forward thinking, Johan.
As Freya mentioned there is some AI going on in Xero already with the way Xero makes suggestions to help you reconcile your bank account.
We recently shared some insights with our customers on our approach to generative AI with Xero and you can read more about this on our blog.
Later this year you'll see Just ask Xero (JAX) be introduced and I'll round back to share once this is available.
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
With the introduction of AI, I strongly hope that AI is used primarily to reduce the workload for users. This JAX AI support chatbot (i think that's what it is) is there to reduce the workload for Xero, not for users. I have yet to interact with an AI chatbot that provides support better than a human does. I bet my house that users will be the trainers of this AI and those users will get absolutely zero compensation for their time.
How about using AI to change workflow (for the better, not like new invoicing)?
With new invoicing, every single time (am I mean literally ever single time) I look at an invoice that is pending approval, I click on the approve button, not the "Approve and Send" button. Get the AI to recognise this very obvious pattern and change the default button to "Approve".
Every single time I approve an invoice awaiting approval and there is at least one more invoice waiting to be approved, I click on the link to invoices, then the tab called "awaiting approval" to check and approve the next invoice. How about having AI see that pattern and, if there is another invoice awaiting approval, then either take me there or provide a 1 click link to it. It could also realise that I never hang around on the screen shown to me after I click the "approve" button which probably means it's pointless to show me that screen.
Before XERO starts on something as complicated as a support chatbot, how about sorting out simple things like 'where does the user usually go after they do these actions". You don't actually need AI for this - it's statistics - based on the past, what is the chance that the user will open the next invoice awaiting approval?
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194 votes
Hi community, thanks for getting involved here and letting us know the importance around being able to see the details whenever an invoice is sent from Xero. We understand the importance of this to our customers and our product team are beginning to review this idea to solve needs in this space. We'll move to Under review and I'll let you know as there's more progress here. Thanks
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Translation of Kelly's message:
"Hi community, thanks for getting involved here and letting us know the importance around being able to see the details whenever an invoice is sent from Xero."
means
"thanks for letting us know about this.""We understand the importance of this to our customers"
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"we didn't understand the importance of this before we changed it because we didn't listen""and our product team are beginning to review this idea"
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"enough people have complained for us to take it seriously""to solve needs in this space."
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I have no idea actually what this means."We'll move to Under review"
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"we are changing the category of this request but we won't tell you what that category change actually means in practice""and I'll let you know as there's more progress here."
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"we will let you know when we do something about it." -
3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Martin Danger
commented
Xero's approach to features is to prioritise features that are used by the majority of users. This approach means that they are aiming for a product that caters to the lowest common denominator (whether Xero is aware of this or not).
By restricting my choice (a minority of users), and ignoring my request, Xero also restrict the choice of many others who don't go to the trouble to make comments such as these.
Xero will likely restrict your choice in the future too. While most of the things you do right now are also done by the majority of other users, you will also do some things in ways that only a minority of users do.
The "satisfy the majority" approach is doomed to fail, and doomed in the mean time to make your workflow more difficult.
Martin Danger
shared this idea
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Another example of dishonest communication from Xero - a pop up window appeared and said
"we've just added some features to make your invoicing experiene smoother: drag and drop files anywhere on the page to attach".
No mention that this was due to numerous user complaints.
No mention that this feature is not new, that it really wasn't "added" but instead "reinstated".
A more honest translation:
"After we removed the drag and drop file attach feature, we have now, after almost 1 year, put that feature back so you can drag and drop a file anywhere on the page to attach it."
And the same can be said for the 2nd feature mentioned in the pop up, being that you can now pick dates using date shortcuts like you could before the downgrade to new invoicing.
Such disingenuous communication.