Invoicing with Xero

When it comes it issuing customer invoices, Xero have done the hard work to make your life easier. From your Xero account, you can quickly and efficiently issue invoices, saving you valuable time and getting your paperwork digitalised and in meticulous order.

There are a number of places within your Xero account where you can send an invoice, but the simplest place to start is from the dashboard, using the ‘new sales invoice’ button. Once the template for the invoice is open, add your customer. You can select from a list of existing contacts by typing the customer name in the field, or, if you need to add a new customer, you can do this right here too. You will just need to add their basic details in the drop-down form.

Once you have a customer added Xero automatically saves the invoice as a draft so you will not lose any details you’ve added. The ‘invoice no’ field will automatically populate with the next in the numerical sequence, so you have no need to worry about keeping track yourself. The invoice date and due date also self-populate with today’s date, but if this is not the case, these fields are easily changeable, you can just select another date from the calendar. There are a number of common options for the due date field to chose from too.

Down in the body of the invoice use the ‘add items’ to add the details of sales. Inventory items can be selected from a list of your regular items, or you can just start typing to find one. You can add or edit items from here too, so you do not have to navigate away from this screen. Once your item is chosen, you can accept the default setting for accounts and vat rates or select different options from your chart of accounts. Over a period of time, Xero will learn how you code your transactions or how your accountant has corrected coding errors and will start to automatically suggest codes.

Once you add the required details to the quantity field, the price will automatically populate (if this is an existing item from your inventory, otherwise you may have to add the price yourself). Xero will then calculate the VAT and invoice total for you. Click on the next line to add another item if needed. If you’ve made an error, items are easy to delete from your invoice by selecting the option menu at the end of the item line (indicated by three vertical dots) and clicking ‘remove’. Lastly, in the subtotals and totals part of the invoice, you can choose to show the figures with or without VAT.

Once you have finish creating your invoice, select the preview button from the right-hand side of the banner at the top to see your invoice as your customer will see it. If you are happy to go, select ‘send’; this will approve and issue your invoice to the customer. For more options there is a drop-down menu which allows you to approve the invoice and ‘get link’ – which takes you to an online version of invoice, ‘print’ – which downloads a pdf which you can print if required or ‘mark as done’ – should your invoice be for internal reasons only.

At the end of the banner is menu (again denoted with three vertical dots) which provides further options to create repeat invoices based on this particular one, to add a credit note to this invoice, or to resend it to the customer.

With a bit of practice, you’ll be issuing your invoices in no time at all, freeing up your time and allowing you to concentrate on other importable business matters.