What’s new in Xero — May 2024

Over the last month, we’ve rolled out updates to key features in Xero, including bank feeds, tax, payroll, invoicing and more. And we’ve answered some of your most requested Xero Product Ideas — including updating our bank reconciliation screen so you can see up to 50 statement lines at once.

Read on to find out what else is new in Xero, or visit Xero Central for a full list of the features released in April.

Global: Sort, search and filter statement lines in bank reconciliation [Product Idea💡] 

Over the next couple of weeks, we are rolling out an update to our bank reconciliation screen, allowing you to see up to 50 statement lines at once. This update was built on community feedback, closing out with 966 votes on Xero Product Ideas — one of our most popular ideas.

We’ve also added the ability to search, sort, and filter statement lines, making it easier than ever to find the information you need. Thanks again to Xero partners who added 1536 votes and comments across both ideas, and to our XPAC for getting involved in a bit of beta testing.

Global: Drill down into profit and loss account transactions in the Xero Accounting app

We’ve added a breakdown of each transaction in the profit and loss report in the Xero Accounting app. This helps you understand your profit and loss more intimately, by understanding the transactions behind the numbers while on the go.

Global: Attach files to invoices in new invoicing [Product Idea💡] 

You can now attach files to invoices from the Xero file library to the new version of invoicing, without having to download them first. We’ve also made it easier to view your attachments side by side next to your invoice.

AU, NZ and UK: New guided onboarding in Xero Payroll

We’ve made improvements to Xero Payroll setup to save you time, including the ability to set up payroll accounts and pay frequencies directly from the payroll overview. Pay calendars have also been renamed to pay frequencies.

NZ: 2024 annual changes to Xero Tax

If you’re a practice using Xero Tax, we’ve released a number of compliance changes for the new tax year. These include rates and threshold changes (ACC, student loan and working for families), IR6 trust return changes, and version numbers to replace CHECKSUM on returns. 

[Product Idea💡] Xero will now identify potential issues and provide a warning banner to show where a tax return may require further review during preparation.

UK: Schedule bills to be paid [Product Idea💡]

You can now schedule bills to be paid on a future date. This change helps you avoid missing due dates, and control what comes out of your bank account and when to better manage cash flow.

US & Canada: Import your PDF statement to your bank account in Xero

To make it easier and quicker to get your bank transactions into Xero when you don’t use a bank feed, we’ve introduced a PDF import feature. This allows you to import your PDF statements straight into Xero without the use of third-party software, if you’re in the US or Canada.

US: Xero Inventory Plus updates

We’ve synced Xero with Shopify’s Point of Sale (POS) system, making it easier to keep inventory in sync and eliminate the need for duplicate entry. This ensures orders from the system are imported to Xero and automatically completed to keep inventory and accounting up to date.

You now have the ability to add reorder points for your inventory items, so you can order your stock at the right time and reduce the risk of overstocking or running out of stock.

We’ve added support for dropshipping as a fulfilment option, allowing you to track and manage your inventory in one place. You can now assign a vendor to your products. Purchase orders will be automatically created for dropship lines, and you can send the PO to the vendor. Once the vendor has shipped the product, you can mark that the PO has shipped and this will complete the sale.

US: Introducing 1099 W-9 on the management tables

We’ve introduced bulk marking W-9s as received on the W-9 management table. If you have multiple 1099 contacts, you’ll now be able to quickly mark off when you have received W-9 information from outside of Xero. 

US: Customise data in sales tax

If you use our sales tax functionality in the US, you can now better customise your data with the source selector feature. This will give you the option to combine and separate sales data sources in reporting, instead of working with separated reports.