You sent the invoice. Did anyone read it?
An unpaid invoice is rarely a refusal. More often it is sitting in a spam folder, at an old address, or under a sender name the client does not recognise. Finance cannot tell which, so it chases everyone the same way, by hand, from the mailbox.
Already built and running in production. Implemented on your own Xero, domain and mailbox.
| Invoice | Client | Amount | Status |
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What happened today
Simulation with fictional invoices. The behaviour is taken from the production system.
Short answer: for companies in Bali that already invoice in Xero, DT-TEKNO connects Xero through its API and sends invoices from your own domain instead of Xero's shared address. Every send is tracked: delivered, opened, bounced. AI reads client replies and picks out payment promises and disputes. Plain rules flag what finance must act on, and a morning digest replaces checking the mailbox by hand. Xero stays the source of truth.
The invoice has left. The information has not.
Most companies treat sending the invoice as the end of the job. For the client, it is the beginning of a small decision: open it, trust it, pay it. Every one of those steps can fail quietly, and from the finance desk they all look the same: “unpaid”.
It arrives from someone else
Xero sends invoice emails from its own messaging service, not from your domain. Your client expects your name and gets an address they have never seen.
It looks like the scams
Fake “Xero invoice” emails have been used for phishing for years. Spam filters and careful clients both learned to distrust anything that looks like one, including yours.
Nobody knows who opened it
Sent is not delivered, and delivered is not read. Without that difference, a wrong address and a reluctant payer get the same reminder.
The answers sit in a mailbox
“Paid yesterday”, “transfer on Friday”, “the unit is not handed over yet”. The replies that matter are buried between auto-replies, and someone has to read every one.
What the record shows about Xero
- Own-domain sending is not available yet. The request “Send as @company-name.com not [email protected]” has been open on Xero's product ideas board since June 2013. In October 2026 Xero marked it as in development.
- Users report the cost. In the same thread, businesses describe invoices filtered as spam or quarantined, and some went back to downloading PDFs and emailing them by hand.
- The format is a phishing template. Security firms have documented repeated campaigns of fake Xero invoice emails, with lookalike sender addresses and malicious links, used to steal logins and spread malware.
None of this is Xero being careless. A shared sender is simply a shared reputation. When it is copied by scammers, everyone using it pays a little for it, usually in late payments.
A payment is a decision. You cannot influence a decision you cannot see.
What we solved
This did not start as a product. It started as one finance team's real problem, built and run in production, and then generalised so other companies on Xero can use it.
From your own domain
Invoices go out from an address like [email protected], with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up properly. The client sees a name they know.
Know when it is opened
Delivered, opened, bounced, per invoice. “Opened three times, still unpaid” tells sales and collectors exactly when to call.
AI reads the inbox
Replies are matched to the invoice and labelled: paid, promise to pay with a date, dispute, blocked, question. No more reading every thread.
Rules you can predict
Bounced and never re-sent. Sent three times, never opened. Two invoices, same client, same amount. Overdue and nobody chasing. Receipt sent but Xero still unpaid.
Paid or not, from Xero
Status comes straight from Xero through the API. When Xero shows paid, the invoice leaves the chase list on its own.
A morning digest
One email, early, with what needs action today. The monitoring screen holds the rest: the full timeline per invoice, delivery analytics, and a view you can share.
Who it saves time for
- Finance stops tracking invoices in spreadsheets and checking the mailbox by hand. Reconciliation starts from a list, not a search.
- Collectors and the CRM team call the client who just opened the invoice, not the one whose email never arrived. Status can be pushed to the CRM so sales sees it too.
- Owners and directors, especially of a PT PMA run from abroad, see the same picture as the team on site, every morning.
How it works
Connect Xero. Your Xero admin approves the connection. Invoices, contacts and payment status sync on a schedule and when Xero reports a change.
Send from your domain. Invoices go out from your own mailbox. We set up the domain records so they are trusted, not filtered.
Track every send. Delivery, opens and bounces are recorded against the invoice they belong to.
Read the replies. Incoming mail is matched to the invoice by its number, and AI labels what the client is saying.
Flag and report. Rules raise what needs action. Finance gets the digest. The screen shows the history behind every flag.
Use case
Context
A property developer in Indonesia invoices villa owners, many of them living abroad, for recurring estate service fees. Invoices were raised in Xero and emailed from Xero. Payment follow-up was done by a small finance team, from a shared mailbox and spreadsheets.
Problem
- Owners said they never received invoices that Xero showed as sent.
- Some addresses in Xero were wrong or outdated, so reminders bounced without anyone noticing.
- Replies such as “already paid” or “waiting for handover” were scattered across threads, so the same owner could be chased after paying.
- Management had no view of which unpaid invoices were truly at risk and which were just undelivered.
Approach
- Connected Xero through the API as the single source of truth for invoices and payments.
- Moved sending to the company's own domain and mailbox, and tracked delivery, opens and bounces per invoice.
- Matched every incoming email to its invoice by invoice number, with confidence levels so a random number never creates a false link.
- Used AI only for reading reply intent. Every flag is a plain rule that finance can check.
- Added a morning digest, a per-invoice timeline, and an address check that suggests the working address when one bounces.
What changed
- “Not received” became a checkable fact: delivered, opened, or bounced.
- Wrong addresses surfaced as flags instead of silent failures, with a likely correct address beside them.
- Payment promises and disputes were visible without opening the mailbox.
- Finance started the day from a short list of actions instead of a search.
What it does not do
It does not make clients pay. It does not replace Xero or the accountant. Open tracking is a signal, not proof, because some mail apps block it. What it removes is the guessing.
Implemented by DT-TEKNO
We are not a marketing agency, and this is not a dashboard you subscribe to and figure out alone. We implement it for your company, on your accounts.
- Look at the current state: how invoices are sent today, where replies go, and what finance checks by hand.
- Connect and configure: Xero, your sending domain and mailbox, and the flags that fit how you collect.
- Run it alongside your current process until the team trusts what it shows.
- Hand over and look after it, with the running cost known before it goes live.
Frequently asked questions
Can Xero send invoices from our own email domain?
Not today. Xero sends through its own messaging service, with your address as the reply-to. Xero marked own-domain sending as in development in October 2026. Even when it arrives, sending is one step: knowing who opened, reading the replies and flagging what is stuck still needs to happen somewhere.
Can we see if a client opened an invoice?
Yes, when it is sent through a mail service that reports delivery, opens and bounces. Treat opens as a signal, not proof. The useful part is the pattern.
Does it change anything in Xero?
No. Xero stays the source of truth. The connection reads invoices, contacts and payment status.
Is our data safe?
It runs on your accounts, and access to Xero can be revoked from Xero at any time. Client data falls under Indonesia's Personal Data Protection Law (UU PDP), so we agree up front which services receive which data.
We are a PT PMA with owners outside Bali.
That is a good fit. The digest and the monitoring screen give directors abroad the same view as finance on site, in English or Indonesian.
Related reading
Visitors are not sales, on why a report without context misleads, and what is worth automating.
Sources
- Xero Product Ideas: “Xero Mail - Send as @company-name.com not [email protected]” (created 27 June 2013; status “In development”, 21 October 2026)
- MailGuard (January 2018): fake Xero invoice scam
- MailGuard (September 2016): wide-scale fake Xero invoice attack delivering malware
- iTWire: scammers again circulate fake Xero invoice
Xero is a trademark of Xero Limited. DT-TEKNO is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Xero.
More than 14 years in IT, digital and multi-platform work. Show us last month's unpaid list, and we will show you which ones never arrived.
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