Delivery Addresses in Xero
Delivery Addresses in Xero
Delivery Addresses in Xero are the same as the Postal Address in Xero Contacts.
When a new invoice is created, or edited, you can add or edit the delivery address.
However, each time the delivery address is updated, it is updated for all invoices for that client.
For some businesses, this is a significant issue because they need to be able to check back and confirm what a delivery address was at the time.
Strangely, this is only an issue for Invoices, and not for Purchase Orders or Quotes. This is because both Purchase Orders and Quotes have open fields where you can add custom information such as a unique one off delivery address that will stick to just that document.
The Purchase Order template has a data field available called “DeliveryInstructions” which is only available on Purchase Orders.
The Quote template has 3 data fields available called “QuoteTitle” “QuoteTerms” and “Summary”. The quote terms are separate to the ones in the Invoice Settings and they don’t hold – which is exactly what you are wanting for a delivery address.
For a general notes field on an Invoice Template, there just isn’t a field available which can be renamed and used for a unique delivery address which wont change or be accidentally updated from another invoice.
However, there are workarounds. The following are solutions I have seen which have worked for different businesses depending on the type of business and their specific needs.
Delivery Address as a Description Item
Write the delivery information into a normal invoice line, generally the first line. Pre-format it as an item with a short code in Products and Services so you don’t have to do that each time. You can preformat with multiple lines, but no other formatting will be available such as font / bold / underline etc. The information will not be searchable with the Xero search tool.
Save a PDF copy
Send a PDF of the invoice to yourself for future reference. An extension of this is to email (cc) a pdf to a programme such as Hubdoc which will automatically file the invoices and does have a text search function. In NZ Hubdoc is free to Xero subscribers.
Extend Invoice Number or Reference
Repurpose either the Invoice Number field or the Reference field, and add the delivery address in there. Both these fields can hold up to 250 characters. The field can be formatted as a table so the text will wrap into multiple lines, but you have no control over the line breaks as “Return” is not accepted in the data field. The field is searchable by the xero search tool.
Restructure Contacts
Restructure your data so the main contact field “Contact Name” becomes an internal information field only. Doing this means you can have multiple contacts for the same company each with it’s own Delivery Address. Usually a suffix is included with the name – e.g. Smith Co (ACK), Smith Co (WTN), Smith Co (CHC) etc. The “Contact Name” never gets printed, and you add the name of the client as Line 1 in the Address Field instead. or add the contact name in one of the other address fields that you might not otherwise use. This can work well for businesses with customers who have multiple branches each with a delivery address which does not change.
Custom Invoice Templates
If you only need a handful of different delivery addresses for your business then it's an option to set up an advanced template for each one. The limit in Xero is 15 templates.