We're excited to announce major improvements to the management of Custom Fields in FYI for practices integrated with Xero Practice Manager.
This new feature will become available to all practices over several updates. We've covered the stages below, and will continue to update this article as the changes are released.
What does this mean for FYI users?
The Optimised Custom Fields Management rollout introduces the following new functionality:
- New XPM ID column in the Custom Fields list, allowing practices to view the ID for the matching Custom Field in XPM.
- New Open in PM button displayed in the Custom Field Drawer when editing the Custom Fields in Practice Settings. This enables users to easily open the corresponding Custom Field settings within XPM.
- To protect the data integrity in FYI, Custom Fields must now be deleted from FYI. Custom Fields deleted from XPM will be automatically recreated, and an alert added to Practice Activity in FYI. This reduces the risk of errors or invalid data where the deleted Custom Field had been used in views and automation processes in FYI. Please note that the Custom Field values in XPM for clients and jobs will not be restored and will need to be re-added manually.
- When creating new Custom Fields, FYI will auto-rename it where the name already matches an existing Custom Field in FYI. The name will be appended with a numeric value to ensure the new field can be synchronised successfully. Users will be able to then update the new Custom Field with a new name as appropriate.
For more information on using the new features to maintain Custom Fields, refer to the articles in the Custom Fields section of the Help Centre.
Going forward, practices should maintain Custom Fields in FYI, with updates synchronised to XPM accordingly.
We recommend enabling the Practice Activity Alert Automation Process in FYI. This ensures that users are immediately notified if a Custom Field is deleted and recreated, or if the Custom Field has been renamed.
Release Stages
- Release Stage 1: Initial subset of practices, contacted by FYI prior to enabling the feature. Released 19/09/2025.
- Release Stage 2: Available to all eligible practices. Release Date 10/10/25.
- General Release: Release Date 23/10/25.
- Update 31/10/25: Feature has been temporarily reverted for all practices.
- Update 8/12/25: Feature has been released for all eligible practices.
Who is this available for?
The new Custom Field sync will be released in various stages to practices with the following configuration:
- Practice Management Source must be set to Xero Practice Manager.
- The Xero Practice Manager app setting Sync Custom Fields from XPM must be enabled to ensure changes to Custom Fields in Xero Practice Manager are synchronised to FYI. For practices where FYI as Primary is enabled, this setting is ignored.
There is no action required to enable the new functionality.
For more details on using the new Optimised Custom Field Management functionality, refer to the articles in the Custom Fields section of the Help Centre.