Last year, we announced that we had started upgrading the technology that underpins the Xero platform, so our teams can build new features faster than ever before. Today, we’re excited to share that we’ve hit a significant milestone on that project when it comes to reporting in Xero.
We’ve had two versions of our reports for a while now — the older version and our ‘new’ reports. Our new reports now have some really exciting features that will help you get quick access to answers and streamline your financial analysis.
But we’re not done yet. Our teams have big plans to add even more reports and functionality in the future. To do this, they really need to focus their attention on new reports, instead of spending their time maintaining older versions that are now outdated.
We’re retiring the older versions of our reports
That’s why we’re retiring the older versions of our reports in Xero. This means you won’t be able to use them from 31 July 2023.
You’ll have access to older versions of our reports until they are retired. After this date:
- you won’t be able to run any older versions of our reports
- any saved drafts of old reports will be removed from Xero
- you will have read-only access to old published and archived reports
For Australian and New Zealand partners:
- you will not be able to create or edit old report packs in Xero HQ, or run them in your clients’ organisations
- any published or archived report packs in clients’ organisations will remain as read-only at the client level
There are some reports that won’t be retired on this date, as we are upgrading them in a different way or at a later date. These include the Budget Manager, Business Performance Dashboard, Payrun, Payroll, Tax, GST Reconciliation reports, and the Reporting API.
We recognise that for some of you, this is a big change and it will take some time to get used to new reports. That’s why we’re giving you plenty of time to make the switch, so you can do it at a time of year that suits you — such as a quieter period, or the start of the new financial year.
How we’re supporting you during the transition
Our customer research shows us that once people give new reports a try, they love them. But we’ll be introducing lots of resources over the next year to support you. These include:
- regular live webinars from our education team (register for upcoming webinars now)
- quick links in older versions of our most used reports that will make it easy to switch
- a product tour in the new Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet reports
- a tips and tricks panel in our most used reports with support articles and how-to videos
- a new tool to help you bring saved layouts from older versions into new Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet reports (we’ll let you know more details as soon as this is available)
Start unlocking more value from your reports
All of our new reports are built with Xero customers in mind. The Xero community requested and voted for many of the enhancements, and we’ve tested them with small businesses and advisors, who tell us they love the improved flexibility and customisation.
Things have changed a lot in new reports over the past year. So if you haven’t given them a try lately, it’s a good time to take another look. Here’s what you can expect:
- A beautiful report centre where you can search or scroll to find new reports and add them to your favourites
- An extensive range of reports and common layouts to help you get quick access to answers when you need them most
- Standardised formats and intuitive menus so you can explore different ways of looking at your data in just a few clicks
- Powerful customisation tools that help you tailor the content and layout of your reports to your unique needs
- The ability to add, hide or reorder columns, group or sort data in different ways, and use filtering options to find what you’re looking for
- Features to help you streamline your financial analysis within Xero, including formulas, schedules, switch rules, notes and more
As you can see, there’s plenty of value to discover in our new reports right now. But our teams are working hard to build on this even further in the months ahead.
Soon, we’ll be adding more reports into Xero — including General Ledger, Journal and Bank Reconciliation reports — as well as introducing foreign currency into new reports. We’re also planning a new feature that will let you quickly apply your favourite layouts to multiple organisations.
It’s time to jump in and give new reports a try
If you’re not sure how to get started, we suggest opening the new Profit and Loss report in Xero. There’s a handy product tour in there that will guide you through the new layouts and settings, so you can feel more confident about giving new reports a try.
We’ve also made it easy for you to provide feedback — just click the ‘feedback’ button in the tips and tricks panel in the new Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet or Account Transactions reports and share your thoughts. This feedback will help our teams understand how we can continue to improve your experience.
I hope you love new reports as much as we do, and look forward to hearing how they offer the insights you need to help your business or practice thrive.
I also hate your new reports. The layout is ugly, it is hard to find how to filter and save, and some of the reports are inaccurate now i.e. P&L entering positive amounts as negative.
Whenever I open a new report the first things I do are change the font, font size, remove wrap text, remove merge and centre, remove 150% zoom, change row height and change column width.
It is difficult to customise a lot of reports to what they were before.
Also once a new report has been accessed, the whole screen has a tiny font.
I very much doubt that you consulted with a significant number of bookkeepers who are the ones who use the product on a daily basis. And given my experience with the new report and the comments above, I dispute your marketing hype that “Our customer research shows us that once people give the new reports a try, they love them”
As previous comment stated, tweak the features and the back end but leave the on screen and in report formatting the say.
Fortunately for Xero, it is still the best of a bad bunch of accounting platforms for this level of the market. I have been using Xero for 8 years and if there was a better alternative I would seriously consider moving my customers, even if it meant absorbing the transition costs.
Listen to the people who really matter and fix things or you will lose customers.
100% agree
Instead of changing what already works, why not add functionality that should actually be part of the core software offering, like REAL multicurrency reporting. So many of your customers have requested reports in actual currency that is not automatically translated to the base currency in the jurisdiction it is operating in these request get ignored.
I don’t understand why you keep tinkering instead of doing the much needed changes.
Totally agree
Wow…. are you listening Xero?? Seems like it’s unanimous the dislike of the new reports. Forgetting about how awful everyone seems to think they are (no comment), I am so tired hearing the hype about reports. I have literally two pages of true FUNCTIONAL changes that I’d love to see, suggestions which have been made since the very beginning!! (hello navigation “put me back where I was before I made the edit”). Can we move on from reports and get to some of those?? Honestly…. anything beyond the most basic of reports is of Xero – sorry, Zero – interest to any of my clients!
(Ok, there is one exception – thanks for finally getting to sticky headings and columns. But seriously?? That should have been done when the report was created!)
I’ve given up using tracking codes … all too hard
Where is your simple to read indexed online user manual covering all reporting options?
Hi There,
Agreed with all the above comments.
The new reports as not user-friendly, as well as the Sales and Purchases modules – the layout looks ugly and hard to navigate.
there is nothing much to add on already placed comments as Robyn said: “Instead of changing what already works, why not add functionality that should actually be part of the core software offering, like REAL multicurrency reporting, improve the payroll? So many of your customers have requested reports in an actual currency that is not automatically translated to the base currency in the jurisdiction it operates in, these requests get ignored.”
You are improving the layouts, and so many users are not happy with it, What bout investing money into better functions to current layouts
Cheers
why changed if something works perfectly. please add functionality that should actually be part of the new technology offering.
i have tried the new reports and it’s not working for us at all. please DO NOT retired the old versions…
100% agreed
We need better VAT reports or an easy way to establish which VAT return transactions are included in rather than having to sift through all the returns to find out.
Why change something that is working well
The reports are extremely ugly and un-user friendly. Why change when the previous work has been recognised by the majority? Please listen to consumer voice to keep our loyalty. Otherwise, we can easily switch to other brands.
Totally agree with all the comments here, please listen!!
I agree with all the comments – the new style of reports are not an improvement. They are very clunky to use, do not fit all the information on screen and do not give us the same flexibility as the old style. Our company also builds software and we would NEVER force an unwanted update on our users. Also making it harder for inexperienced users to find the old style reports is just a cynical way of trying to manipulate your user stats. I really hope you do a u-turn and keep your legacy code on your reporting tool, otherwise we will simply switch to one of many other providers or use a reporting add-on for better reporting. Happy to take part in user studies so you see just how much we rely on the old style reports (i.e. daily).
Agree with all above, you keep changing things that don’t need to be changed, please listen to your users, not your IT staff that love to change things
Yes, I hate the new report styles – not easy to set up at all. I find them time consuming in trying to get the new report styles show the information our clients need, are used to seeing & enjoy per the old report styles!! XERO please take note.
I agree with all of the above comments. I have been working more than 50 years on various accounting packages. Do the “people” who plan these changes actually do daily work in Zero. It is basic but works – the new layout is messy, you can’t find/ locate data easily- AP comes to mind. Why change what works.
Hate the changes.
Have 7 active file and am now looking at alternatives.
Hope it is not too late from someone at Xero to listen to customers.
Another – for negative response to Xero new reports.
Why change – it is not at improvement at the user end!
I do not want old reports updated. One of my Client Files has had the Bank Reconciliation Report updated and it is impossible to understand. How about a Purchase Order Report if you have nothing more practical to spend your time on ?
I like the easy to read – all on one page OLD reports; succinct and clear. Now with the new ones, i need to scroll left and right and end up with less than 30% of the information on one page than i previously did with your ‘OLD’ reports.
Why are you making it harder for us !!!
Please retain the old reports to maintain customer satisfaction.
Regards,
Peter McLane
It’s remarkable how little you actually LISTEN to your clients.
Leave the P&L reports as they were. Especially the ‘view an older version of this report’
When they do change, though I am hoping you might actually LISTEN for a change to your customers, I will have to spend ages formatting the reports to look EXACTLY like the old report.
The new P&L just groups the whole lot under Cost of sales or Admin.
So am I expected to create a report to mimic the old report? So I have all the necessary cost centres?
Really annoyed with this.
Waste of my time having to do more work, just because you don’t LISTEN.
New reports are horrible! step in the wrong direction, more complicated, less efficient, missing detail that was available previoulsy..seriously YUCK!!
Please leave old reports
PLEASE LEAVE OLD REPORTS.
I need to run P&L by tracking category (per project). the new reports lump them all together!?!
I have ALL My group reports set up and linked with the same templates and P&L groupings.
The new reports are not clear and not user friendly. I do not want or have the time to be forced into using terrible new reports!
I hate the new reports because i cannot show each of the tracking codes side by side, instead they are all combined into one sum or if you select individually you have to create multiple reports instead of one. Far less user friendly and functional and don’t give me the information i need to run our business efficiently! Please keep the old layouts & options!
where is the currency option for PnL? lmao is this for real? are you really taking away the option to change currency in reporting??? This is legit a make or break thing for me. I NEED to be able to change the currency for reporting. I dont live in the same country as the base currency.
The new reports are a real step BACKWARDS.
Reporting is TERRIBLE. I like this platform and is super usable and could use some true upgraded functionality and this ‘reporting upgrade’ isn’t it. Please read the user comments above and add some of that functionality – these reports are awful and actually making me take MORE time which is opposite of what automation should be doing. It’s making me consider changing platforms.
I also dont like the new reports.
The old reports were more user friendly for businesses like ours that multiple entities. For example, we could swtich between instances of Xero, refresh the report and the new entity’s Xero would show up. We could also copy formats across from other entities. The ONLY good thing I can see about the new report is the better click to drill down information.
I have only recently used the new report – and the first thing I noticed on the NEW BALANCE SHEET REPORT – month end currency exchange rates. The old reports allow you to insert/update the exchange rate but there is noting available in the new reports
Also the date ranges for reports – if you don’t specify END OF MONTH – your reports are incorrect. Surely programmers are aware not all months have 31 days, and comparing last day of FEB and 28 of January is a waste of time!!!
I have only looked at P&L and Balance Sheet – both are more time consuming because of the ‘improvements’