Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Kime on July 21, 2011 at 18:43

I would post the invoice as normal then use the journal import. There is also a very easy to use copy function within the journals in Xero which I use.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Wettone on July 21, 2011 at 23:51

Thank you for your reply.  I will have a look at the journal copy function but I was looking for a more automated process.  Even Sage has recurring entries, so I had hoped such a facility would exist in Xero.

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Permalink Reply by Catherine (Xero) on August 10, 2011 at 18:36

I'm not sure if recurring journal entries is on our radar - I will feed this back to the team and see what they think. What other times would you use them where there is no alternative transaction to enter in Xero? We do understand other systems have lots of useful features that you're used to and we like to understand the case for them rather than just copying functionality if there is an easier process/better reporting outcome for all users. Your advice can help us make Xero better :)

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Permalink Reply by Tim Wettone on August 11, 2011 at 15:20

Primarily, we use recurring journals to smooth out costs that accrue monthly but may be invoiced irregularly, such as rent, rates, insurance, accountants' charges (where invoiced annually) staff bonuses etc.  Given the better functionality of Xero in being able to show month by month profit and loss accounts, it helps to have such costs showing each month instead of every quarter or year. So the way to handle it is to have accrual or prepayment accounts set up for each of these items and to transfer a recurring journal from the accrual or prepayment account to the expense account. That would certainly result in a better reporting outcome, as expenses shown on the profit and loss accounts would be more consistent.

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Permalink Reply by Braden on August 24, 2011 at 18:20

How about the facility to post a reversing journal. i.e flag it as reversing on posting which would mean it would automatically reverse on the 1st day of the next period. 

 

As I understand you have to manually reverse journals now which is time consuming

Since day 1 of month end, reversing journals were used and continue to be used

 

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Early on September 13, 2011 at 15:06

I have just moved across to Xero for a client I keep the books for. The director owns the building and invoices the company once a year for rent. I would like to set up a reoccurring entry for 1/12 of the rent to go out of prepayments into rent in the P&L. However, there appears to be no function for this and I have to do a manual journal each month. It would be very useful so the monthly P&L would be updated automatically.

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Permalink Reply by Catherine (Xero) on September 14, 2011 at 1:10

I can add a little to what I said above - recurring journals is on the to do list and it's useful to know more about the situation in which you'd use them. Our Customer Care team have suggested to me that in some cases customers are finding that repeating invoices achieve the results they want - an Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable repeating invoice template with zero value invoice total essentially creates a recurring journal entry when using negative and positive line items. I'm not sure if this might work for your transactions in the meantime. I'll certainly pass your request onto the product team. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Braden on September 14, 2011 at 8:56

^ not the most helpful answer if I'm honest

No point in passing it on if its already on the list to do ?

There are many examples of where a recurring journal is extremely helpful...e.g. the above for rent which is paid quarterly, yearly insurance premiums, any payment for an expense which represents more than a month that it is necessary to spread the cost over the year (there are other posts giving examples above)

 

I hope that principal doesnt need to be explained to your development team Catherine and that someone in that team has worked in a accounting role and done more than one month end. 

 

For those of us that have done more month ends than we care to remember, if we reported results without amortization of expenses to match income  we wouldnt have a job

 

Suggesting to use invoices to achieve this is just daft

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Tim Wettone on September 14, 2011 at 9:32

I'm pleased to hear that this topic has moved from "not on our radar"to the "to do list".

 

Your Customer Care team's suggestion wouldn't solve the problem.  Taking a quarterly rent payable invoice for example, one would need to enter the invoice in full in order not to breach VAT integrity and one would use the invoice date as the entry date.  That would oridnarily take that quarterly cost into the Rent account in P&L in one month, whereas it actually relates to costs over 3 months.  You couldn't handle that with extra positive and negative lines in the invoice template as all entries there would have the same dates on them.

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Permalink Reply by Catherine (Xero) on September 14, 2011 at 21:03

Obviously there is a real need for a lot of new functionality in Xero and it's a balancing act to get the right mix between breadth and depth. Yes I will pass all the examples of recurring journals onto the team as well as a feature request each time someone asks - it's with your feedback and requests that we can build up a picture of the features that are really missing and in demand. Indeed we have 150 people working at Xero including many accountants. Even so, these scenarios are extremely useful as we round out the full picture of how people in different types of businesses in different regions would expect Xero to work, and we like to look into examples given where people expect something to 'work like xyx product' as we don't necessarily want to just reproduce a process if there's a better way to do it - not always the case, but sometimes. I understand the scenarios given and need for recurring journals. Thanks for your explanations patience.

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Permalink Reply by Braden on September 14, 2011 at 21:15

Catherine, is there an official Xero "to do list" ?

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Permalink Reply by Catherine (Xero) on September 14, 2011 at 21:26

@ Braden - Yes. It's rather large and not something we're publishing as official as it can be rather changeable based on a variety of factors - we don't want to create false expectations and some items we might not do if they're really edge case or way outside the realm of an accounting product.

A good question though. We do track everything internally and we publish a list of a few things we're working on next at each release in the release notes. Also, based on the popularity of UserVoice for customers to record and request API features and integrations we're looking at how we might provide this for the Xero products in general - perhaps via our own forum site that we're working on. I take it you'd be keen to see such a list? Would it be daunting and make Xero look lacking if it was a really long list? Would customers be disappointed if an item was placed on the list a year ago and we hadn't implemented it? Just trying to work through what would be useful and able to be maintained.

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