Welcome to the Community,Ā @earlywork_team!Ā š
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Step 5Ā - once certain fields in Airtable are populated. Right now I have a filter to check if the fields exist, however, because everything in Zapier runs instantly, the filter catches it and the zap stops. I need it to continue running once the fields are populated
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I wonder if it might be worthĀ setting up a View in Airtable that records would only appear in if they have values in certainĀ fields. Then set the Zap to trigger whenever a new record enters that specificĀ View? Just thinking that might help to ensure that the Zap is only triggering on records that have those fields populated to begin with.
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Step 6.3Ā - once approved, send out invoice...Again, I have a filter here to check if the invoice is approved before continuing...however it stops again because it all runs instantly. I want to be able to approve the invoice in Xero and that would trigger the zap to continue goin
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Maybe you could split this part of the workflow into two Zaps? So the first Zap creates the invoice draft and the second Zap triggers when an invoice is approved, searches for the contact and then emails the invoice to them.
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As a sub-problem...all of my invoices are getting generated at once - ideally the loop would go through each step sequentially
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Ah yes, loops donāt run sequentially they run through all at the same time. It sounds like youāre essentially looking to create aĀ recurring invoice, is that right?
If so, would the invoices need to be created indefinitely or is the contact only sentĀ invoices only for X number of months? Iām thinking that perhaps you could use an app like Google Calendar to create an recurring event which contains the Airtable record ID that contains the invoice info. Then when the event starts itāll trigger a Zap that then looks up the relevant record in Airtable and then generates and sends out an invoice.
Do you think the above suggestions could work?
Hey @SamB! š Thanks for such a speedy response here!Ā
Thank you for the suggestions re: creating a new airtable view and using the calendar invite to generate a set number of Xero invoices! Iāve also broken up my super long zap into smaller ones so itās been much easier to troubleshoot š
Maybe you could split this part of the workflow into two Zaps? So the first Zap creates the invoice draft and the second Zap triggers when an invoice is approved, searches for the contact and then emails the invoice to them.
^^ Iāve created a separate zap that does the draft invoice - that was fine. However, I donāt think thereās a Xero trigger for when an invoice status gets updated to āapprovedā š¢ The only relevant option seems to be āNew Sales Invoiceā which triggers when any new sales invoice is created. I donāt think thereās a way to search for when specific invoices are created. Could you help me out here?
Youāre welcome @earlywork_team! š
Ah yes youāre quite right. It looks like Xero doesnāt have an āInvoice Updatedā type of trigger, I must have got mixed up with a different app there. So sorry about that! Thereās an exiting feature request to have an āUpdated Invoiceā trigger added to the Xero app so Iāve submitted your vote for that. That way we can notify you as soon as itās available to use.
In the meantime, I did some digging and it looks like it might be possible to set up custom webhook notifications to be sent from Xero to Zapier whenever thereās a change to an invoice:

Iāve not tested this out but in theory, youād need to use Webhooks by Zapier as the Zapās trigger. And setĀ the webhook in Xero set up to send notifications through to the catch hook URL that appears in the Zap. You can find out more about triggering Zaps from webhooks here:Ā Trigger Zaps from webhooks
That said, itās an advanced feature andĀ youād need to be on a paid Zapier plan in order to use webhooks. So that might not be an ideal workaround to use.
If that webhook workaround isnāt a viable option, then the invoices might need to be sent out directly via Xero as theyāre being approved. It looks like thereās the option to do that: Approve and send a customer invoice.Ā
Hopefully that helps!
Ooh thanks for this @SamB! Iāve never used webhooks before but nowās probably a good time to start learning! If not, weāll just resort to sending the invoices manually š
I had another idea where the flow could look something like
- Send Slack message when draft invoice is made
- Use Push to Zapier to send the message to a zap
- Use āPush to Zapierā as the trigger
Hopefully at least one of these options works out!
Glad I could help,Ā @earlywork_team!Ā Ooh yay, thatās a very cool idea for an alternative workaround!Ā Great work here š
Hope it goes well. And donāt be shy if you run into any issues in setting any of that up. The Community is always here and always happy to help!Ā š
Just wanted to follow up here to share that the feature request to have an Updated Invoice trigger added to the Xero app has been implemented!Ā šš

Please do give that new Updated Invoice Xero trigger a try and be sure to let us know if you run into any issues with it.Ā In the meantime, happy Zapping! ā”