Say a customer has paid 140 invoices in one transfer and sent you a spreadsheet saying which ones. The money is in the bank feed, the invoices are all sitting in Awaiting Payment, and the obvious next step is to import the spreadsheet so Xero marks them paid. That's where most people go looking for Xero's payment import and find there isn't one.
Xero has no CSV import for customer payments. They're recorded by batch payment, Find & Match, one invoice at a time, or by an app writing through the Xero API. This guide covers what Xero's import tools do accept, why a bank statement import doesn't solve it, and the four routes that do get a list of paid invoices into Xero as payments. It's written for the business receiving the money, not the one sending it.
What Xero's import tools cover
Xero has CSV importers for the records you create before money moves: contacts, sales invoices, bills and bank statement lines, among others. There's no matching importer for customer payments, the step that takes an invoice from Awaiting Payment to Paid. Xero's product ideas forum carries a long-running request to bulk import received payments, with businesses describing customers who pay a hundred or more invoices at once.
Payments aren't missing from Xero itself. They're available through the Xero API, which is how apps write them, and through the batch payment and bank reconciliation screens. What's missing is a file you can upload from the import menu. So the question isn't whether you can bulk-record payments in Xero, it's which route suits the file you've been sent and how often you're sent one.
Why a bank statement import doesn't do it
The first workaround people try is shaping the payer's spreadsheet into a bank statement CSV and importing that. It imports, but it doesn't mark anything paid. A statement import creates statement lines in the bank account, which is the same thing your bank feed already gives you. Each line still has to be reconciled against an invoice before the invoice moves to Paid.
Worse, if the account has a live bank feed, the imported lines sit alongside the feed's own line for the same money, and you now have a duplicate to delete. The statement import is useful for an account with no feed. It isn't a payment import, however the columns are arranged.
The four routes that do record the payments
Each of these ends with the invoices marked paid and a transaction ready to match to the bank line, or already matched if you worked from Find & Match. They differ in how much typing they need and how well they hold up as the list gets longer.
- Batch payment from the invoice list. In Sales, filter Awaiting Payment, tick the invoices on the remittance and choose Batch payment. Xero shows each invoice with its amount due, you adjust any that were part-paid, and the batch posts as one transaction that matches the single deposit in the bank feed. This is the closest thing Xero has to an import, and it's the right answer for a list of up to a few dozen lines.
- Find & Match in bank reconciliation. Open the deposit in the Reconcile tab, choose Find & Match and tick the invoices it covers. You can search by contact, invoice number or amount, and change the amount applied to each invoice. It lands in the same place as a batch payment, and suits a deposit you're working from the bank line outward.
- One payment per invoice. Open each invoice and record a payment against it. It's the slowest route, but it's the one to use when the payer sent several transfers that each need their own record, or when invoices are in different currencies, because Xero batch payments only take invoices in the organisation's base currency.
- An app that writes payments through the API. This is the only route where a file goes in and payments come out. Generic import tools map your spreadsheet's columns to Xero's payment fields. Remittance matching tools read the payer's document as it arrives and work out the invoices themselves.
Where the manual routes run out
The first three routes are all ticking boxes in a list, and the effort scales with the line count. A 15-line remittance is a few minutes in Find & Match. A 140-line one is most of a morning, because every line is a search, a tick and a check that the amount agrees. Three things make the long lists slower than the line count suggests.
- The payer's numbers aren't always yours. A purchase ledger often stores your invoice number with a prefix dropped, a leading zero added or a suffix of its own. The search box wants the exact number, so each mismatch is a manual hunt.
- Short payments hide in the list. A line paid at less than the invoice value needs its amount changed before the batch will balance, and on a long list you find it when the total is out, not when you tick it.
- Xero caps a batch payment at 200 invoices. Find & Match isn't held to the same cap, but a remittance over it recorded by batch payment has to become two or more batches that together match the one deposit. Our guide to the 200-invoice batch limit covers how to split one cleanly.
If the same customer sends a long list every week or every month, the time goes on working out which invoice each line means, not on clicking Batch payment. That's the part an import file was supposed to remove.
Getting the payer's file into a usable shape
Whichever route you take, the work goes faster if the list you're working from is clean. Before you start ticking, sort the payer's file so it agrees with what Xero will show you.
- Sort the payer's lines by invoice number, and sort Xero's list the same way.
- Total the paid column and check it agrees with the bank deposit before you touch Xero. If it doesn't, the difference is a deduction, a credit note or a line the payer left off, and it's quicker to find in the spreadsheet than in a half-built batch.
- Mark any negative lines. They're usually credit notes the payer has netted off, and in Xero they're allocated to an invoice rather than paid.
- Keep the payer's file. Attach it to the batch payment or the invoices once it's posted, so whoever looks at the customer's account later can see why each invoice closed.
Credit notes are the line most likely to stall a batch, since Xero won't take a negative amount in a batch payment. Allocate the credit note to its invoice first, then batch what remains. Our guide on matching one payment to multiple invoices in Xero walks through that order.
Which route to use for which list
The right route depends on how long the list is and how often it comes, more than on anything in Xero.
- A few dozen lines, now and then: a batch payment from the invoice list. It's quick, and the result matches the deposit as one line.
- Working from the bank feed: Find & Match, so the deposit and the invoices are tied together in the same step.
- Mixed currencies or several transfers: one payment per invoice, or per transfer, so each record agrees with what the bank received.
- Long lists from the same payers every week: an app that reads the payer's file and records the payments, because that's when the manual routes start costing hours rather than minutes.
How RemitClear handles the payer's list
RemitClear treats the payer's spreadsheet as what it is, a remittance advice. You forward it to your RemitClear inbox or upload it, as a CSV, an Excel file, a PDF or the email itself, and it reads every line and matches it against your open invoices in Xero. Matching handles exact, partial and prefix-based invoice numbers, so a payer's version of your number still finds your invoice.
The review screen shows each line beside the invoice it matched, with short payments, credit notes and invoices already paid flagged before anything is posted. When you approve, it posts the payments to Xero as one batch payment or as separate payments, whichever you've set, and splits a remittance over 200 invoices into batches that together equal the deposit. By default, the payer's document is attached to the batch payment or its invoices in Xero for the audit trail. A matched remittance can post on its own once you've switched on auto-posting for perfect matches, and anything less than perfect waits for a person.
If your payers' remittances arrive by email, setting up a forwarding rule means the spreadsheet never has to be downloaded at all. Our guide to setting up a remittance email inbox covers that. To see a real list matched against your own invoices, the multi-invoice payment matching page is the place to start.
