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Invoicing Features

Below are some screen shots and some explanation and tips for how to use the various fields and features when creating invoices for your customers.

1. You can enter a new customer in Xero without having to add all the details (address etc) to create an invoice.  You can add the other details later.
2. Enter “t” for todays date, you can also do quick enter like 15/5 for 15th May.
3. You can enter “+7” in the due date field to add 7 days to the invoice date (you can use any number of days) .
4. Invoice number – automatically generated in Xero, but can be overridden, we normally recommend not to do this though.
5. The reference field can be used for a purchase order number or the name of the person who requested the goods or services.  This is also a handy search field so could be used in a variety of ways.  For example some of our construction industry clients put the site address in here.
6. You can have multiple invoices templates in Xero.  This can be very useful if you have different brands, or different payment options.

1. If you setup Inventory Items in Xero you can use these to quickly populate your invoices.
2. These can be setup with a standard description which can be overridden if you need to.
3. If you need more than 2 decimal places in your unit price you can swap the quantity and unit price fields over as the quantity field allows more than 2 decimal places.  For example if you have a unit price of 4.5667 with 100 units you can enter it as 4.5667 in the Qty field and 100.00 in the unit price field.  You could then amend your invoice template to just show the total.
4. If you want to enter your line items including GST you can just select Tax Inclusive and Xero will deduct the GST of the Unit price you enter.

1. As discussed before you can add the address details after approving the invoice.  Quick tip, for an invoice to be valid for GST purposes it needs to include an address for the customer.  Remember to add an email address if you want to email invoices and statements.
2. Email invoices to clients.  The Xero stats show that those that email invoices have less debtor days than those that are not emailed.  You can customise your standard email wording under the Settings / Invoice Settings.
3. Print the invoice via PDF based on your branding theme.
4. Add files to the invoice (for your view only, not customers).  This is useful if you wanted to add a purchase order document, project authorisation or anything else that may be useful when chasing payment or validating your invoice amount.
5. Invoice options, setup repeating invoice for regular charges, copy, invoice, edit it or add a credit note.  Tip:  you can only edit an invoice if a payment has not been allocated to it.

Link to Video on Invoicing