Great Stuff. Thank you for listening.

For the answer to a couple of the questions raised on the blog in the past two days, have a look at this interview with Rod Drury yesterday (/plug)
http://www.boxfreeit.com.au/Finance/xero-apologises-for-qscaringq-users-with-online-invoicing.html

Excellent Rod, well done!

Quick Q – for recurring invoices will we need to go into all invoices and click on an option? Which is the default?

@Justin – to send the recurring invoice without the online link set them to approve (not approve and send) and change the option, then bulk send. This will be fixed in the next major release.

This is a great program addition and an outstanding collaborative response. Now PLEASE add the endlessly requested voting on feature requests soon. Then we all can see what most of us want. We certainly should have this for feature requests when we have long had it for API requests. Xero also should recognize request proponents, with public announcements, Xero Hero certificates and nominal prizes, when it uses their ideas. Google “public new feature and bug tracking” for more on this.

Hi Rod – As I say new to Xero and dealing with boss already! What’s not to like about this company? Thank you for your responses I am only sorry I missed the London conference. The sample invoice works fine for me. I think on-line invoicing is an excellent enhancement to the system – as you say certainly a plus feature. I will be switching to Xero sooner rather than later. I’m impressed.

Well done for that fast response. The link only option is right for me – I want to see my customers have read their invoice!

Superb response times but no need to apologise. This is truly forward thinking and it just needs the rest of us to catch up a bit. I re-iterate my comments before – where we’re you when xero changed the way we deal with invoicing forever

Hey Rod – thanks for delivering this feature!

Finally getting the functionality that Freshbooks has. Been waiting for this for a long time.

That said, are sure about the hosting etc? I tried the process from a “customer” perspective (did a demo run on my live file), and the process is quite clunky, long-winded, ambiguous and a little user-unfriendly.

Is there any way to make it more seemless? Other people have reported it feels like your signing up for Xero, and I had to take a few moments just to properly comprehend what was going to play out. It worked out alright.

Some comment/requests:
1. Any plans to create a full blown customer portal, with other features such as the ability to load supporting docs to invoices (if required), and so that customers can view the history on certain invoices and their account overall.

It’s one thing to be able to see the history from the accounting side, but from my experience a lot of arguments and delays can be avoided if the history (especially the login/viewing history) for invoices is inescapably “in their face”!

I’ve had the opportunity to operate a system based on Freshbooks (hence why I like some of their functionality so much), and because the customer couldn’t see their history, they still tried the old line “I haven’t got that invoice, can you send it to me again please”. The worse part was if you try tell them you did, on such-and-such date, they said” no, you’re lying!”

I guess it makes it so that they have less places to hide.

2. I think the ability to theme the portal to reflect a businesses’ individuality, not be be confined to the blue bar and light grey background. I get that you want to have the logo on the page. Cool. Leave it as a watermark at the bottom.

Hi Rod,

Thanks for quickly looking into the email invoicing options. We send all of our NZ and Australian invoices using this function and the new feature confused quite a few of our customers. The select options you have posted (.pdf will be just fine) look great. Thanks.

Matt C

Overall t’s a great development.

Could we have a say in where the online invoice wording and URL is put in the email – at the moment it’s the first thing they see. I’d prefer it to be added at the bottom of the text I type in from the Xero interface rather than before it.