For Xero · repeating invoices

Import repeating invoices into Xero

The short answer: Xero has no import for repeating invoice templates. You can add one at a time, or create one from an invoice you have already sent. There is no CSV import, no bulk create, and no way to copy a set of them between Xero organisations. If you have arrived here with a hundred templates to set up, that is the honest position, and it has been the position for years.

The request has been open on Xero's own product ideas site since 2014, with a few hundred votes behind it. Xero's most recent answer there, in July 2026, was that it is not currently on the roadmap.

Why it bites at the worst moment

Nobody meets this problem gradually. You meet it on the day you move onto Xero, or the day you take on a client who bills the same customers every month — which is exactly the day you have least patience for typing. And the conversion services that move your books across do not help: the Xero-sponsored one lists invoice templates among the things it does not convert, so the recurring billing is left for you to rebuild by hand.

The same wall shows up in three other places: moving templates from one Xero organisation to another, taking over a set of clients from another bookkeeper, and putting a price increase through a book you have only just finished setting up.

What people do instead

By hand. Realistic for ten templates. For a hundred it is a day, and for a thousand it is a fortnight of typing that nobody checks properly at the end.

Keep billing somewhere else. Raise the invoices in the old system and import the finished invoices into Xero each month. It works, and it means never really moving to Xero.

Import the invoices, not the templates. Xero does import ordinary sales invoices from CSV, and several tools help with that. It is a different job: you get the invoices you have already raised, not the schedule that raises them next month.

What Ratelift does

Ratelift creates repeating invoice templates in Xero from a spreadsheet. One row per invoice line, with the contact, reference, amounts, account and tax codes, frequency and start date. You see every template in a preview before anything is written, and they arrive in Xero as drafts, so nothing bills until you approve it.

It also does the other half of the job — changing the prices on templates that already exist, in bulk, with a start date and a check on every field afterwards. That is what most people find us for.

If what you need is a price increase across templates you already have, see Annual price increase on Xero repeating invoices.

Moving to Xero from Sage, QuickBooks or another system

The route is the same whatever you are leaving: Sage, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, KashFlow, MYOB or a spreadsheet you have kept for years. Get the list of what you bill each customer out of the old system as a spreadsheet, shape it into one row per invoice line, and import it.

The old system's export will not match column for column, and it does not need to. What matters is that each row ends up with the contact name exactly as it is in Xero, a description, a unit price (and a quantity, if it is not 1), the account code from your Xero chart of accounts, whether the price includes tax, how often it bills, and the date of the next invoice. Ratelift checks every row and shows you every template before anything is created. The import screen has a sample CSV you can download to see the layout.

One of our first customers moved 56 recurring invoices from Sage to Xero this way and billed from them the following month. We have not yet seen a move from each of the other systems. If yours exports something awkward, email a sample with the customer names removed to hello@ratelift.app and we will tell you whether it will work.

What to know before you try it

• Contacts have to exist in Xero first. Xero will not create a contact while it creates a repeating invoice, and it matches on the exact name. Ratelift tells you which names are missing so you can add them and run the same file again.
• Sales repeating invoices only. Not repeating bills.
• Some things do not carry across. Attachments, tracking categories and approve-for-sending settings are not part of what can be created this way.
• New templates use your default branding theme unless you pick another. A template takes the invoice branding theme you choose on the import screen, or the one named in a BrandingTheme column in your file. With neither, it goes on your organisation's default theme. Either way it inherits that theme's online-payment options (for example Pay by Direct Debit or card). To change the theme on a template afterwards, open the repeating invoice in Xero, Edit, and pick the Branding theme.
• If you are moving between Xero organisations, end the old templates before their next invoice date — otherwise the same customer is billed twice in the same month.

Which start date do I give a template?

The date of its next invoice, not the date the billing first began. Xero treats a repeating invoice's start date as the first date it owes an invoice for, and it works forward from there: give a template that has billed monthly since 2023 a start date of 2023 and Xero will raise every invoice since, at once. So for billing that already exists, the start date is the next date the customer should be invoiced — 1 November if they were last billed on 1 October.

Two things follow. A start date that has already passed is refused before the preview, so a file cannot back-bill by accident; and Xero itself refuses any start date before the start of the organisation's previous financial year, whatever the file says. Dates can be written as 2026-11-01, 01/11/2026 or 01-Nov-26: the import asks which way round they are rather than guessing, because a date read the wrong way round lands months out.

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. It works on sales repeating invoices only, and the contacts need to exist in Xero first — Xero will not let a repeating invoice create a contact. 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 new template has raised. No bank feeds, no payroll, no editing your contacts.

Questions people ask

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