An early Xmas present has arrived from Xero this morning :)

Today when you log in to Xero you will see some significant changes. We have summarised these for you below. For our Xero Boosters look out for a few different videos this week explaining the changes in more detail.

The most significant and exciting change is around Emailing out your Invoices. Email Templates have been a request by many of you to help in collecting your debts. Well good news. It's now easier than ever.

Email Templates - You can now create Email Templates to send with your Invoices.....so no more typing out the same message over and over again. You can setup 5 Email Templates per type. So you can have 5 different email templates for your Sales Invoices. We suggest setting up the following:

  • Standard (Here is your Invoice),
  • Reminder (Just a reminder your Invoice is due in 2 days, please call our office if there is a problem),
  • Overdue 1 (Just a reminder have your over looked your invoice, please call our office if there is a problem - at 5 days overdue),
  • Overdue 2 (Reminder 2 - Your Invoice is overdue, please call our office immediately to resolve - at 10 days),
  • Overdue 3 (Unfortunately we have no choice but to forward your account on to our debt collector - at 15 days overdue).

We would also recommend a phone call in between each of these Emails. It's now really easy to log in each morning. Click on your overdue invoices and select the template that applies. You can use the search parameters in Xero to ensure you are only sending these emails to people with invoices between these dates.

To setup these templates just go to Settings >General Settings > Email Settings & then click Add template.

You can also do the same thing for your Statements, Remittance Advices, Repeating Invoices and Credit Notes.

Outstanding Statements - Another statement type has also been added to the mix today. You can now also send out statements that only have the outstanding invoices on them not all invoices in any given period.

Remittance Advice - You can now also send Remittance Advices for one off payments that you make outside batch payments. You just have to manually mark off the payment as paid and then hit Send Remittance Advice (will explain this in detail in Xero Booster)

Sales Dashboard - You will notice a nice new look to the Sales Dashboard (formally known as Accounts Receivable or Money Coming In). All of the features are still the same it's just much easier to see the important things such as Overdue Invoices etc. To see the full list all you need to do is click on Awaiting Payment or Overdue etc.

Purchases Dashboard - Similarly to the Sales Dashboard the Purchases Dashboard has also had a makeover. Again all of the features remain it's just much easier for you to see your cashflow position.

Payment Terms - You can now set default payment terms for your business. If your standard terms are 14 days then you can set this up so every customers invoice will automatically default to be due 14 days from the invoice date. You also have the option to set these dates for each individual customer. To change these just go to Settings >General Settings > Invoice Settings and click on Default Settings

Due Date Shortcuts - previously when you used the due date shortcuts in Xero the date would default 7 days from today not 7 days from the actual invoice date. This has now been changed. So if you prepare an invoice today that is dated 2 days ago and you press +7 this will now default to 7 days after the Invoice date.

Timeout - Xero used to automatically log you out if you hadn't done anything in the last half hour. This has now been extended to 1 hour. So you will still be logged into Xero for an hour after you last complete anything.

Social Links - you can now also add Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Google + to your online invoices. This will allow people to click through to your Twitter profile or Facebook page for example. Just go to Settings > General Settings > Organisation Settings and put in your social links. These links will then appear on your online invoices.

Chart of Accounts - You can now search when in the Chart of Accounts rather than just having to scroll to find what you are looking for.

What a bumper release to take you into the silly season. Any questions at all re the above just let us know. Head on over to the Xero Blog for more details http://blog.xero.com/2012/12/boost-your-invoicing/comment-page-1/