Xero sales report: sales by month, by customer and by item

Short answer: Xero has no single report called “Sales report”. Three reports answer the three questions owners ask. Sales by month: run the Profit and Loss for one month and compare with 11 previous months; the sales lines across the top are your monthly sales. Sales by customer: run the Receivable Invoice Summary with the layout set to summarise by contact, and show the Net column (sales before GST or VAT). Sales by product or service: run Sales by Item, which only works if your invoices use item codes. Expect the customer report to total less than the Profit and Loss whenever some sales are entered straight from the bank rather than invoiced. The worked example below shows how to spot and bridge that gap.

Menu names move between Xero releases and differ a little by region (older versions call the customer report Income by Contact or Customer Invoice Activity). If a label below does not match your screen, type the report name into the search box on the reports page.

Which report answers which question

Question	Report	Settings that matter
Are sales going up or down?	Profit and Loss	One month, compare with 11 previous periods, plus the same month last year
Which customers bought the most, and who stopped?	Receivable Invoice Summary	Summarise by contact; show Net; the same dates last year beside it
Which invoices make up a customer’s total?	Receivable Invoice Detail	Group by contact; filter to one customer
Which products or services sell?	Sales by Item	The date range; only items used on invoices appear
Sales by region, branch or channel	Profit and Loss filtered or split by a tracking category	Only works if invoices carry the category
Sales not on an invoice (card takings, online shop payouts)	Account Transactions for the sales accounts	Filter by source: Receive Money and bank rules

The Profit and Loss is the one to trust for the total: it includes every sale whatever way it was entered, net of credit notes. The other reports explain the total; they rarely equal it.

How to run the sales by customer report

1. Go to Reporting (Accounting > Reports in Xero’s older menu) and open Receivable Invoice Summary.
2. Set the dates to the month or year you want, by invoice date.
3. In the report settings, change the layout to summarise by contact, and tick the Net, Tax and Gross columns. Read Net: Gross includes GST or VAT, which was never your money.
4. Check the status filter includes paid and awaiting payment invoices, or you will only see part of the month.
5. Sort by Net, highest first, and export to Excel if you want to compare two years side by side.

Run it again for the same dates last year. The question is not who your biggest customer is; it is which customer changed.

A worked example: sales down 8,000, and it is one customer

These figures are made up. Southerly Roasters Ltd, a Wellington coffee roaster, sees September 2026 sales of NZ$84,000 on the Profit and Loss, against $92,000 in September 2025. Sales are down $8,000, or 8.7%, and the owner’s first thought is that the whole wholesale trade is quiet.

Step 1: the customer report does not match the P&L. The Receivable Invoice Summary for September 2026 totals only $67,000 Net. The missing $17,000 is the online shop: its payouts come in through the bank feed and a bank rule codes them straight to Sales as Receive Money, so there is no invoice and no contact. Account Transactions on the Sales account, filtered to Receive Money, shows the 17,000. $67,000 + $17,000 = $84,000, so the books are fine; the report was only ever going to show invoiced sales.

Step 2: compare by customer, with the online shop added back as its own line:

Customer (Net, NZ$)	Sep 2025	Sep 2026	Change
Harbour Cafes group	21,000	9,500	(11,500)
Other wholesale cafés (31 accounts)	48,000	50,500	2,500
Office coffee contracts	8,000	7,000	(1,000)
Online shop (Receive Money, no invoice)	15,000	17,000	2,000
Total, agrees with the Profit and Loss	92,000	84,000	(8,000)

The trade is not quiet. One group of cafés bought $11,500 less, and everyone else together grew from $71,000 to $74,500, up 4.9%. Harbour Cafes was 22.8% of sales a year ago and is 11.3% now. A phone call found it had moved two of its five sites to another roaster in July. That is a customer problem with a name, which is far easier to act on than a vague slowdown.

Step 3: Sales by Item. Every wholesale invoice uses item codes, so Sales by Item splits the $67,000 of invoiced sales: 1kg wholesale bags fell, while 250g retail bags sold to cafés for resale rose. The lost sites were the ones buying 1kg bags, which matches the customer story.

What the owner did next: asked Harbour Cafes what it would take to win the two sites back, and checked how much of the year’s sales sits with the top five customers using the customer concentration calculator. One customer at over 20% of sales is a risk whether they are growing or shrinking.

Why the sales reports do not match the Profit and Loss

Cause	Which way it moves the customer report	How to check
Sales entered as Receive Money or by bank rule (card takings, online shop payouts, cash)	Lower than the P&L	Account Transactions on the sales accounts, source Receive Money
Credit notes	Depends on the report and its settings	Look for credit notes in the period on Receivable Invoice Detail
Gross column instead of Net	Higher, by the GST or VAT	Switch to Net
Cash basis on the P&L	Different months: the P&L counts sales when paid, the invoice report when invoiced	Check the basis on the P&L; see cash vs accrual
Invoices coded to non-sales accounts (a recharge to “other income”)	Higher than the sales lines	Group the P&L lines you call sales together
Draft invoices	Left out of both until approved	Approve or delete old drafts

Sales by Item has its own gap: any invoice line without an item code is left out, so its total is often well below the invoice report.

Reading sales properly

• Compare with the same month last year, not just last month. Most small businesses are seasonal. The Profit and Loss by month puts a year of sales side by side, and the sales growth calculator turns the two figures into a growth rate, with your price rises taken out.
• Look at three-month totals. One big invoice landing on the 1st instead of the 30th can swing a month by more than any real trend.
• Split any change by customer before you react. A fall across all customers is a market or price problem. A fall in one or two is a relationship problem. The why did my profit drop guide splits a fall into sales, margin and overheads.
• Check margin as well as sales. Sales can grow while profit falls if the growth came from discounts or low-margin work. The gross profit margin guide covers what to look for.
• Invoiced is not collected. A customer whose sales are rising and who pays late is a cash problem. Check the aged receivables alongside the sales report.

Common mistakes

• Reading the Gross column. It includes GST or VAT. Use Net for sales.
• Treating the invoice report total as sales. It leaves out anything entered from the bank. Start from the Profit and Loss total and use the other reports to explain it.
• Comparing a 30-day month with a 31-day month and calling it a trend. Compare like with like: the same month last year, or rolling three months.
• Adding item codes halfway through the year. Sales by Item is only useful from the date every invoice line carries an item. Earlier months will look like sales were tiny.
• Leaving online sales as one lump with no detail. If the online shop is a large share of sales, record it so you can see it: a separate sales account, or a tracking category for the channel. The tracking categories guide shows how to report on it.

Common questions

Is there a sales report in Xero? Not one with that name. Use the Profit and Loss for total sales by month, the Receivable Invoice Summary summarised by contact for sales by customer, and Sales by Item for sales by product or service. Older versions call the customer report Income by Contact.

How do I see sales by customer in Xero? Run the Receivable Invoice Summary for the dates you want, change the layout to summarise by contact and show the Net column. Run it again for the same dates last year to see which customers changed.

How do I see monthly sales in Xero? Run the Profit and Loss for the latest month and compare with 11 previous periods by month. The sales lines across the top of the 12 columns are your monthly sales, including sales that were never invoiced.

Does Xero have a sales by product report? Yes, Sales by Item. It shows quantity and value sold for each item, but only for invoice lines that use an item code. Lines typed in without an item are left out.

Why does my Xero sales report not match the Profit and Loss? Usually because some sales were entered as Receive Money or by bank rule (card takings, online shop payouts), so they have no invoice and no customer. Other causes are reading Gross instead of Net, credit notes, and the Profit and Loss being on cash basis.

Should I look at sales including or excluding GST or VAT? Excluding. The Net column is your sales; the tax is collected for the government and paid over on the return. If you are not VAT registered in the UK, the same Net figures for the last 12 months go into the VAT threshold calculator, which shows when you would have to register.

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