Moving to xero. So absurd that QBO cannot handle this simple feature. Really, truly, so out of touch with their customers. Year after year we wait for this simple most needed feature and year after year QBO keeps raising their monthly price with nothing to show for it. Oh, wait, they did "change the menus" and they did come up with a new "layout" but did they fix the broken dynamic variables? Nope. So out of touch with what is needed by business to save time (which is money).

I'm not sure if QB developers ever look at these forums. Likely not. I'd love for one of them to respond as to why this is such a difficult fix/add, instead of the ongoing "I can see how this is important to you..." that goes nowhere. In the military, we used to call this the "Thank you sir, may I have another...", meaning the moderators simply give lip service and nothing ever gets fixed we thank them and keep asking (definition of insanity).

I can see all the dynamic tags right in the code. I see the objects containing all the values that would replace those tags right in the code. It's a simple JavaScript "str.replace". This probably could be fixed in a couple of minutes (though QB uses react, so that likely complicates things since it's such bloated code the developers probably don't know how to fix this easily).

On top of that, the variables are in all different formats as well, which tells you this wasn't a well thought out design (likely never was formally designed): [DUE_DATE], [Invoice No.], [customer first name]. I mean what is the format of dynamic tags anyway? QB still hasn't been able to produce a list of dynamic tags because they were probably added by different developers and never documented. They don't know themselves!

Example. If you select the greeting it gets put into the email body and it works. You have to live with the way they insert it and can't add text before it (I don't use "dear" or "to", I use "Hi" - like "Hi John,", but I can't do that because my only choices are "Dear" and "To"). But, if you try and type manually the exact same thing it shows from being injected by the greeting in the body anywhere (let's use [customer first name]), it doesn't work. Go figure. But you CAN type in the body "[Invoice No.]" and it will work. Makes absolutely no sense other than it's a hack and was never part of any formal release plan.

Hey QB, produce the list of acceptable tags, get the format consistent, make it work!. Is that really an unacceptable request? 3 years ongoing now?

I'm sure you can sense the frustration in this post. I produce anywhere in the range of 40 to 60 invoices a month and each month I have to spend hours manually modifying the email so it can be personalized, so telling me to "give feedback" (which I'm convinced goes into an abyss never to be read because nothing ever comes of any feedback provided). Fixing this simple feature (which is so common on all other vendor products), would reduce my invoicing effort down to 15 or 20 minutes tops.

The frustration of this (and several other things that are common sense) has met its limits with me. QB has lost touch with their customers. They don't really care what feedback we provide because it goes nowhere. I guess it's nice to own the market share, but keep not listening and watch it will whittle away.

Time to stop waiting for "common sense" features and just move on. You lost me.