Also payment terms and outstanding statements.
Xero has addressed a long-standing weakness with the ability to customise “system emails” sent by its cloud accounting program. The addition was part of a bumper release that included several changes to the global version of Xero.
Email templates were one of the most requested features in Xero’s forums. Templates were standard features of desktop accounting programs which sent invoices and statements directly to customers with standard greetings or reminders of payment terms.
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Previously Xero users could only send invoices to customers in a plain text email created by the accounting program that contained a link to the online invoice. Businesses had to type greetings or reminders with each invoice.
Xero’s email templates could be used to set up a series based on the length of time an email was overdue. Templates could be created for the initial invoice, a reminder and three overdue templates at two, five and 10 days overdue.
Email templates were available for invoices, statements, remittance advices and credit notes. Each template could include placeholder tags which automatically pasted the due date, invoice amount and client details into the email.
The email templates were not fully customisable. Only the subject line and body text of messages could be customised and emails could only be sent from the email address of the user currently logged into Xero.
Email signatures were due in a later release, a Xero spokesperson said.
Other additions included default payment terms that automatically set the due date on sales invoices and bills. Terms could be set globally for the organisation or set for an individual contract.
Xero could send statements of outstanding invoices as well as the activity statement which showed a complete list of paid and unpaid invoices.
Xero added the ability to send remittance advice emails for single invoice payments. And links to social networks such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn could be added to invoices.
Xero also redesigned the sales and purchases dashboards and renamed accounts receivable as Sales Invoices and accounts payable as Bills. Xero also extended the timeout period after which it asked for a login from 30 minutes to an hour.
The full release notes were available on Xero’s website.