How to import or copy repeating invoices into Xero (migrating from another system)

Moving your billing into Xero means recreating every recurring schedule: who is billed, for what, how often, and from which date. Xero has no import for repeating invoice templates, so each one has to be built inside Xero. This guide covers the three ways to do that, the start-date trap that creates a pile of old invoices, and what Repeatwise does and does not do in a migration. Repeatwise cannot create templates from a spreadsheet.

Last checked 23 Oct 2026 against Xero Central, Xero Product Ideas and the Xero developer documentation.

What Xero offers

Xero’s import page describes importing invoices from a CSV: you download a template file, fill it in, and the invoices arrive as drafts. It recommends no more than 500 per file and requires only ContactName and InvoiceNumber. It does not describe importing repeating invoice templates. The Product Ideas request, Invoices: Repeating Invoices - Bulk Import/Export, has 294 votes and the status Accepted as of 23 Oct 2026, and Xero replied on 15 Jul 2026 that the work isn’t currently roadmapped and that it recognises the gap.

That leaves building the templates inside Xero.

Before you build anything

1. Get the schedule out of the old system. For each one: customer, reference, the lines (description, quantity, price, account, tax rate), how often it runs, the next date, any end date, and whether it emails the customer.
2. Tidy the contacts in Xero. Xero’s invoice import warns that a name which does not match exactly creates a duplicate contact. The same care applies when you pick contacts by hand.
3. Set up the accounts, tax rates, items and tracking the lines refer to.
4. Pick a cutover date and make sure only one system bills each customer for each period.

Way 1: build each template by hand

1. Start a new template. In the Sales menu, select Invoices, open the Repeating tab and click New Repeating Invoice.
2. Enter the customer and the lines. Description, quantity, price, account and tax rate, as on the old system’s schedule.
3. Set how often it repeats. Under Repeat this transaction every, enter the interval. Xero’s article gives annual templates as 12 months, or 52 weeks to land on a particular day of the week.
4. Set the Invoice Date to the first invoice Xero should create, and make it a future date. Xero’s article says a past or current date creates a series of past-dated transactions.
5. Set the due date and, if there is one, the end date. Xero says all fields are mandatory except End Date and Reference.
6. Choose what happens to each invoice. Save As Draft, Approve, or Approve for Sending. Xero says Approve for Sending emails the first invoice only if the invoice date is in the future.
7. Check the tax setting and the currency, then save. The Amounts are setting decides whether prices include tax. Foreign currencies need a business edition plan with multicurrency, and an automatically approved template needs an exchange rate for the transaction date.

Repeating bills are built under Purchases, then Bills, then the Repeating tab, with New repeating bill (Xero article).

Way 2: copy from an invoice you already have

If a customer already has an invoice that looks like the template, start from it. Xero’s article says to open the Awaiting Payment or Paid tab, select the invoice, click the menu icon and select Repeat. That copies the invoice’s details across, and you edit them before saving. For a bill, open it, click Bill Options, then select Repeat. Files on the invoice are not copied to the template. Check the start date, because it is an ordinary field on the template and a past date creates old invoices.

Way 3: go through the invoice import

This is the route a Xero community manager described in a 2022 reply on the bulk update idea: import invoices as drafts, then use them to create templates. The import itself is straightforward. In the Sales menu select Invoices, click Import, download the template file, fill it in, upload it and click Complete Import. The catch is the second half. Xero’s article describes the Repeat option on invoices in the Awaiting Payment or Paid tab, so check in your own organisation whether Repeat appears on a draft. If you have to approve each imported invoice to reach it, every one is a real invoice in your books until you void or delete it, and lock dates and invoice numbers come into play. Use this route with care, and not for more than a few templates.

The start-date trap

This is the easiest mistake to make. Say a customer’s old schedule began on 1 March two years ago and runs monthly. If you copy that start date into Xero, Xero’s article says a series of past-dated transactions is created, and the date can go back to the start of your previous financial year. With Approve or Approve for Sending set, you can end up with approved invoices for months you already billed from the old system. Two further points from the same article: if your accounts are locked and the start date is before the lock date, you can’t set up a template that approves automatically, and Approve for Sending emails the first invoice only when the date is in the future.

Always set the first date to the first invoice you want Xero to create, and keep it in the future.

What it costs in time

Use your own number. If a template takes five minutes to build and check, 80 templates take nearly seven hours and 200 take almost 17. Typing the same customer, account and tax details again and again is where the slips come from, so check a sample against the old system afterwards.

After you build them

• Compare Xero’s list with the old one: the count, each customer, price, frequency, next date and end date.
• After each type of template has run once, open the invoice it created and check it against the old system’s last invoice.
• Keep the old schedule switched off, not deleted, until the first Xero invoices have gone out correctly.

What Repeatwise does for a migration, and what it does not

Repeatwise is an independent app that works with Xero. Version one edits the prices of repeating invoices that already exist in Xero, reading and writing them through a CSV round trip if you want. It does not create templates from a spreadsheet and it cannot import your schedules from another system. If you need hundreds of templates created from a sheet, you need another tool or a developer, and you should ask what it covers (sales invoices only, or bills too) and how it treats the start date.

Where it helps after you have built the templates:

• Check the migration. The free scan lists every repeating invoice Xero now holds, with customer, reference, frequency, next run date, lines and totals, and you can download it as a CSV to compare against the old system’s list.
• Change the prices in the same move. If the new system should bill different prices, say you are migrating and raising rates together, fill the NewUnitAmount column of the exported CSV for the lines to change and upload it. Repeatwise shows a preview of each line before and after, then changes them in one job. Undo works for 30 days.

It works on repeating sales invoices. The scan, the preview and the CSV export are free, and so are the first 5 templates you change in each organisation. After that a $39 pass covers one organisation for 14 days and up to 250 templates, and $59 a month per organisation has no template limit; both prices are excl. VAT/sales tax. Annual access is $590 per organisation per year, paid upfront, excl. VAT/sales tax; it renews each year until you cancel renewal. See pricing.

Questions

Related guides

• How to update all repeating invoices at once in Xero (annual price increase)
  Bulk price changes and annual increases: Xero’s manual method, API limits, then preview, backup and 30-day undo.
• How to export a list of all repeating invoices in Xero (next run date, amounts, customers)
  Xero cannot export repeating invoice templates. What you can get by hand, and a free scan that lists them all.
• Pricing
  Free scan and preview, a $39 pass or $59 a month, excl. VAT/sales tax.