For Xero · repeating invoices

Annual price increase on Xero repeating invoices

The short answer: Xero can't put a price increase on all your repeating invoices at once. Each template has to be opened and edited on its own. With a couple of hundred customers on repeat, the annual price rise is most of a working day of careful retyping.

Why it bites every year

Many businesses that bill on repeat put their prices up once a year, often in January or April. Some use an inflation figure such as CPI or RPI; others use a flat uplift of 3% or 5%, rounded to a tidy number. In Xero that means opening every template, working out each line's new price, typing it in, and not missing one. A slip means a customer billed the wrong amount, or billed the old price for another year.

Does changing an item's price update repeating invoices?

No. A template keeps the price it was given. A new price on the item only reaches a template when someone edits that template, so updating your products and services list still leaves you editing every template.

What people do instead

• Edit each template by hand. It's reliable if slow, and easy to lose your place halfway down a long list.
• Put it off, or charge only new customers the new price. That saves the admin but loses the increase, and the gap grows each year it's skipped.
• Move recurring billing out of Xero into a separate subscription tool. That works, but it's another system to pay for and keep in step with Xero.

How Ratelift does it

Ratelift connects to your Xero organisation and puts the new prices on your repeating invoices in bulk.

1. Pick the templates: all of them, or filter by contact, reference, line or account code. A repeating-invoice template has no invoice number until Xero raises the invoice — that's how Xero works — so search by those instead.
2. Set the rule: a percentage or a fixed amount, and how to round it: exactly, to the penny; tidy, to a neat figure sized to each price's own increase (for a percentage); or one step of your own — 50p, £1, £5 or £10, up or to the nearest. You can view prices with or without VAT, and before it writes anything Ratelift asks the one thing it will never guess: whether your prices include VAT.
3. Read the preview: every template, every line, old price and new. Nothing in Xero has changed yet.
4. Confirm. Ratelift creates each new template, reads it back from Xero and checks every field against what you approved. Only then does it remove the old one.

Every price change can be undone from the run report, free for 7 days. Ratelift is operated by Aragon Software Ltd, which holds professional indemnity and cyber insurance.

A worked example

A customer pays £340 a month, with a £3.40 line on the same invoice, and you're putting prices up 5%. The new prices are £357 and £3.57. Rounded exactly, they stay £357.00 and £3.57. Rounded tidy, they become £360 and £3.60: big prices round to pounds and small ones to pence, so neither goes far past the 5% you asked for. The preview shows each line, old and new, before anything is written.

Rounding is applied to each line's unit price, and never against your change: a rise never rounds a price down, and a cut never rounds one up. If you choose a step of your own, say up to £5, the £340 line becomes £360, but £3.40 would jump to £5.00 — far more than 5% — so that line takes a finer step, 5p, and becomes £3.60. The preview marks it and says why, and you can change that template or leave it as it is.

What to know before you try it

• Ratelift replaces templates rather than editing them. It creates a new template at the new price and removes the old one only once the new one checks out. Invoices already raised aren't touched.
• No back-dated invoices. Each new template starts on the old one's next invoice date, so there's nothing for Xero to back-bill. Ratelift won't touch a template that's due to bill in the next two days, and it won't bill anyone the new price before the date you choose. So pick a day when few of your invoices are due in the two days after it: changing a template that close to its invoice can make Xero bill the customer twice, which is why Ratelift holds those back.
• Custom email messages aren't copied. If a template has its own email message (the Edit Message box in Xero), Xero doesn't let apps read it, so the new template uses your standard email wording. Add any custom wording back afterwards. Ratelift marks the templates that send automatically, which are the only ones that can carry a custom message.
• Tracking categories are copied and checked line by line on the new template.
• Xero drops the account and tax rate from a £0.00 line when a template is recreated, and Ratelift cannot carry them over. If you later give that line a price, pick the account again in Xero.
• Per-template payment switches aren't copied. If you've switched an online-payment option off on a particular template (in Xero's invoice screen), you'll need to switch it off again on the new template — Xero doesn't let apps copy that setting.
• Attachments aren't copied. A price run creates a new template without the original's attachments — add them again afterwards in Xero if the template has any.
• The first job is small. Your first job on a live organisation is capped at five templates, so you can check the result in Xero before doing the rest.
• Sales only. It works on repeating sales invoices; repeating bills aren't changed.
• You can try it on the demo first. Xero's Demo Company, its practice company, has no repeating sales invoices of its own, so import our sample file there first, then try a price change.

What it costs

Your first job of up to five templates is free, with no card to enter; after that it is a flat fee per job, by the number of templates it writes. Ratelift is an independent product, not built by Xero. It asks Xero for your invoices, for read-only access to your settings and contacts, and for the ability to stay connected; it writes only repeating invoices, and reads your sales invoices once after each job to show you any a changed template has raised. No bank feeds, no payroll, no editing your contacts.

Checked against Xero: September 2026.

Comparing tools? Read how Ratelift and Invoice X differ.

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