I deleted an invoice in Zanda. Why is it still in Xero?

Because the export only pushes. Zanda sends invoices to Xero in a batch and then sends the payments applied to them, and a deletion is not part of either batch. The copy in Xero stays in whatever state it was exported in, so it has to be deleted or voided in Xero by hand.

Can I find a deleted Zanda invoice on the Xero export screen?

No. The export screen lists invoices that still exist in Zanda, and its Deleted filter returns none. Find the copy in Xero instead, searching on the invoice number, which is the field both systems still share.

Do I delete or void the invoice in Xero?

It depends how it was exported. An invoice sent as a draft can be deleted, no payment can have been applied to it, and its number goes back into use. An invoice sent as approved is voided rather than deleted, so the number stays on the record for an auditor to follow. Where the practice wants that number back, Xero's instruction is to change it before voiding.

Xero will not let me void the invoice. What now?

Read the message. A document with a payment or a credit note allocated to it is refused until that allocation is removed, and a document dated before the lock date is refused until the lock moves or the reversal is dated in an open period. Remove the payment first, then void, or raise a credit note where the payment has to stay.

Can I reinstate a deleted invoice?

In Zanda, often. The client's Billing section has a Show Deleted switch, an invoice raised without an appointment can be restored on its own, and one deleted with its appointment comes back by restoring the appointment. In Xero there is nothing to reinstate, because the exported copy was not deleted there. A restored Zanda invoice reads as not yet exported, so check Xero before the next batch runs or the practice ends up with two copies.

An invoice was deleted and nobody at the practice deleted it. How?

Check whether the client cancelled through the client portal. Zanda attempts to delete the associated invoice when a portal cancellation comes in and the invoice is still unpaid, and leaves it alone once an online payment, a Medicare claim or a linked claim item is attached. The Xero copy exported before that cancellation stays where it is.

Problems

Deleted Zanda invoice is still in Xero

Deleting an invoice in Zanda removes the Zanda record. The export runs one way in batches, so a copy already sent to Xero stays there, and the export screen stops listing it. Find the Xero copy by invoice number, delete it while it is still a draft, void it once it was approved, and remove the payment first where one was applied.

Key facts

What the deletion touches: The Zanda record only. Invoices move to Xero in a batch, and a deletion is not part of any batch, so the Xero copy stays as it was sent¹
Why nothing looks wrong: The export screen lists invoices that still exist in Zanda. Its Deleted filter returns none, so a stranded copy leaves no queue to work through¹
What state the Xero copy is in: Draft where the export setting sends drafts, awaiting payment where it sends approved invoices, and paid where the payments batch had already run¹
What Xero permits: A document carrying a payment or a credit note is refused, reported as this document cannot be edited as it has a payment or credit note allocated to it³
Which numbers come back: A draft or an awaiting approval invoice releases its number once it is deleted. An approved invoice keeps its number, so the number is changed first where it is wanted again after the void⁵
Where the payment sits: In the single Xero payments account the export settings name. The export article names the Payments Clearing account as the one often used¹
Who can trigger the deletion: A client cancelling through the client portal. Zanda attempts to delete the associated invoice while it is still unpaid, so nobody at the front desk has to act for a Xero copy to be stranded⁴
Where the invoice still is in Zanda: In the client's Billing section with the Show Deleted switch turned on, or through the log file when the client profile is not known²
What it costs while it stays: Accounts receivable carries an invoice nobody will collect, and a clearing balance that will not return to nil is picked up by an accountant at BAS time⁷

What deleting an invoice in Zanda actually touches

Zanda moves invoices into Xero as a manual batch, and it runs in two passes: the invoices first, then the payments applied to them. Both passes push. Nothing in the export sends a deletion, a void or a removal the other way, so the invoice in Xero is a copy taken on the day the batch ran, and it keeps living its own life after the Zanda original is gone.

That is why the practice sees two different answers to the same question. In Zanda the invoice is gone from the client's billing list. In Xero it is exactly where it was: a draft, an approved invoice awaiting payment, or a paid invoice with a payment sitting against the payments account the export settings name. Which of those three it is decides everything about the fix, and it is set by a setting nobody looks at twice.

A deletion is not necessarily somebody's decision either. Where the client portal takes cancellations, Zanda attempts to delete the associated invoice while it is still unpaid, and leaves it in place once an online payment, a Medicare claim or a linked claim item is attached to it. An invoice exported yesterday can be gone from Zanda this morning with nobody at the practice having touched it.

Why the stranded invoice leaves no queue to chase

A failed export is easy. It shows up as an error, the invoice stays in the queue, and somebody works the list. A deletion produces the opposite: the export screen filters on New, Edited, Exported and Deleted, and the Deleted filter returns no invoices, because the screen lists what still exists in Zanda. The one place a practice looks to see what has and has not gone across cannot show the case where the two ledgers have come apart.

So the drift is silent on both sides. Zanda has no reason to mention Xero on its deletion path, and Xero has no reason to think anything happened. The invoice is only found later, by a person reading an aged receivables report and asking who this client is, or by an accountant whose clearing account will not come back to nil.

The two ledgers after a deletion

Four places in Xero carry the stranded invoice, and each of them reads as an ordinary balance rather than as an error. The accounts below follow the allied health canonical template, where online payments clearing is account 107 and private patient clinical services is account 400. Every clearing account in that template posts at the BAS excluded tax type, so a payment left sitting there distorts the balance sheet rather than the activity statement.

Plate 1The four places a deleted Zanda invoice keeps living in Xero, and what each one reads once the copy is cleared.

Which state the Xero copy is in decides the fix

Xero treats a draft and an approved document differently, and the export setting chose which one this invoice became. Xero's own article draws the line at the invoice number: a draft or an awaiting approval invoice hands its number back when it is deleted, while an approved one has to be renumbered before it is voided if the number is wanted again. Zanda's troubleshooting article carries the refusals on top of that.

What Xero permits, by the state the exported copy is in¹³⁵

State of the copy in Xero	What Xero permits	What the practice does
Draft, because the export setting sends drafts	Edited and deleted, and no payment can be applied while it is a draft	Delete the draft, and nothing stays posted. The number goes back into use, so the same appointment can be re-exported under it
Approved and awaiting payment	Editing and deleting are what the export article gives a draft, so an approved copy is reversed rather than removed	Void it, and note the reason in the invoice. Change the number first where the practice means to reuse it
Approved with the payments batch already run	Refused while a payment or a credit note is allocated to it	Remove the payment, then void the invoice
Dated inside a locked period	Refused, reported as invoice or payment is in Xero locked period	Reverse it in an open period, or agree a change to the lock date with the accountant

Clearing the copy in Xero, in order

Find the invoice in Xero by its invoice number. The number came from Zanda, so it is the one field the two systems still share.
Check whether a payment is allocated. If one is, remove it first, and watch where it lands: it was posted to the payments account named in the export settings, so removing it moves that balance too.
Delete the invoice where it is still a draft. Void it where it was approved, so the number stays visible and an auditor can see what happened to it.
Where the invoice was paid and the payment cannot be unwound, raise a credit note against it instead and allocate it, which leaves both documents on the record. See reconcile a credit note for the mechanics.
Check the period. A document dated before the lock date is refused until the lock moves or the reversal is dated in an open period, which is the same wall described on lock dates and sync.
Write the reason on the void or the credit note. In six months the only record of why an invoice disappeared from Zanda is the sentence somebody typed into Xero.

The monthly count check that finds the strays

Because a deletion raises no flag, the practical control is a count, run once a month against the same date range in both systems. It takes a few minutes and it catches deletions, restored invoices and batches that were only half exported at the same time.

Count the invoices Zanda issued for the month, and count the invoices in Xero for the same month on the revenue accounts the export writes to. A gap in Xero's favour is the number of stranded copies.
Compare the two totals as well as the two counts. Equal counts with different totals usually means an invoice was edited in Zanda and re-exported rather than deleted.
Read the payments account the export settings name. A balance sitting there past the date the bank line cleared is a payment whose invoice has gone.
Scan aged receivables for client names the practice does not recognise, and for balances older than the practice's own billing cycle.
Keep the month's export screenshots or the exported list. It is the only evidence of what was sent, since the screen itself stops showing deleted invoices.

What a stranded invoice does to the numbers

On an accruals basis the invoice is income the practice has reported and will not collect, so the profit and loss and the BAS both carry it. On a cash basis nothing moves until a payment does, which is why a practice on cash accounting can hold strays for a year without noticing. Either way, accounts receivable overstates what is owed and the clearing balance stops telling the truth about money in transit.

Higher accounting or bookkeeping fees if your trusted professionals have picked up the problems and are having to fix them before preparation of your BAS or Tax Returns each time⁷

That bookkeeper is writing about a different practice system, where archiving an invoice leaves the same copy behind in Xero. The mechanism is the same one described here, and so is the bill at the end of it: the work of finding and reversing strays lands on whoever prepares the BAS, months after the person who deleted the invoice has forgotten doing it.

Finding the deleted invoice again in Zanda

Before reversing anything in Xero it is worth reading the original, because a deletion is sometimes a mistake rather than a decision. Zanda keeps deleted invoices: the client's Billing section carries a Show Deleted switch, and the log file finds an invoice when the client profile is not known. An invoice raised without an appointment can be restored on its own, and one deleted along with its appointment comes back by restoring the appointment.

The habit that keeps it from happening again

The cheapest version of this problem is the one caught the same day. Two habits do most of the work: decide the deletion in Xero first where the invoice has already been exported, and know which of the two export statuses the practice sends, because a practice sending drafts can delete cleanly while a practice sending approved invoices is voiding and crediting.

Agree who deletes invoices. In most practices it is one person, and the same person can clear the Xero copy in the same minute.
Check the export status setting once, and write it where the front desk can see it. It is the difference between deleting a draft and unwinding a payment.
Delete before the payment batch runs where the choice exists. An unexported invoice costs nothing to remove.
Check the portal cancellations. A client cancelling online can remove an unpaid invoice that Xero already holds, and that deletion reaches nobody's inbox.
Read the Zanda to Xero export settings after any change to the Xero connection, because the export filters reset when the settings are saved.

What Ledger Map does with it

Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved once, and posts one balanced document set per deposit against the clearing account, leaving one exact match in the bank feed for the practice to accept. A deposit that no longer has an invoice behind it becomes a question with the options laid out, rather than a posting nobody sees.

That does not make a deleted invoice disappear from Xero, and this page states the manual fix because the manual fix is what a practice does today. What changes is the finding: a payment with nothing behind it stops being something a person has to go looking for once a month. See how it works for the approval step, or the Zanda hub for the rest of what the export does and does not carry.

Questions

I deleted an invoice in Zanda. Why is it still in Xero?
Because the export only pushes. Zanda sends invoices to Xero in a batch and then sends the payments applied to them, and a deletion is not part of either batch. The copy in Xero stays in whatever state it was exported in, so it has to be deleted or voided in Xero by hand.
Can I find a deleted Zanda invoice on the Xero export screen?
No. The export screen lists invoices that still exist in Zanda, and its Deleted filter returns none. Find the copy in Xero instead, searching on the invoice number, which is the field both systems still share.
Do I delete or void the invoice in Xero?
It depends how it was exported. An invoice sent as a draft can be deleted, no payment can have been applied to it, and its number goes back into use. An invoice sent as approved is voided rather than deleted, so the number stays on the record for an auditor to follow. Where the practice wants that number back, Xero's instruction is to change it before voiding.
Xero will not let me void the invoice. What now?
Read the message. A document with a payment or a credit note allocated to it is refused until that allocation is removed, and a document dated before the lock date is refused until the lock moves or the reversal is dated in an open period. Remove the payment first, then void, or raise a credit note where the payment has to stay.
Can I reinstate a deleted invoice?
In Zanda, often. The client's Billing section has a Show Deleted switch, an invoice raised without an appointment can be restored on its own, and one deleted with its appointment comes back by restoring the appointment. In Xero there is nothing to reinstate, because the exported copy was not deleted there. A restored Zanda invoice reads as not yet exported, so check Xero before the next batch runs or the practice ends up with two copies.
An invoice was deleted and nobody at the practice deleted it. How?
Check whether the client cancelled through the client portal. Zanda attempts to delete the associated invoice when a portal cancellation comes in and the invoice is still unpaid, and leaves it alone once an online payment, a Medicare claim or a linked claim item is attached. The Xero copy exported before that cancellation stays where it is.

Sources

Open questions

Zanda's video tutorial on the Xero integration says at 11:08 that the export screen will list invoices previously exported to Xero and since deleted in Zanda. The written export article says the Deleted filter returns no invoices. The two are not reconciled by the vendor, and this page follows the written article.
Zanda publishes no last updated date on the export, deletion, troubleshooting or client portal articles, so how recently the vendor confirmed the export screen behaviour is not known.
Xero's article settles the invoice number: a deleted draft releases it, and an approved invoice has to be renumbered before voiding. What it does not settle is whether the practice system offers that number again once the Xero copy is gone, so the re-export is worth watching rather than assuming.
Zanda's Beta import of payments reconciled in Xero covers invoices Zanda exported. What it does when the Zanda invoice has been deleted is not documented either way.

Managing Integration With Xero
Zanda. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
Deleting and Restoring Invoices
Zanda. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
Troubleshooting Xero exports
Zanda. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
Client Portal Appointment Cancellations and Payments Management
Zanda. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
Delete or void a sales invoice
Xero Central. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026.
primary
Allied health by funding source, the canonical template
Ledger Map. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
primary
Xero and Cliniko, four common problems
Festival Bookkeeping. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
secondary

Review

Last reviewed 4 Sep 2026 by Shane

General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.

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