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ALISON - The original posting says "Invoices - Unapprove option" not BILLS.

I think we need to be consistent in terminology. Xero refers to BILLS in the purchase ledger, and Invoices in the sales ledger. If people actually mean BILLS, then perhaps it would be helpfull if they did not confuse the issue.

I completely understand where you are coming from with Bills, and can see much less of a problem unnaproving a bill. Tax fraud is a lot more difficult in the P/L. If you delete a bill, the supplier is still going to be chasing you for payment, and if you don't record bills correctly, your tax liability will be higher.

It would be relatively easy to allow bills to be unapproved, but a lot more difficult to do the same for invoices. Allowing an invoice which has EVER been approved for payment to be deleted would be a fraudsters delight.

Even the current situation of allowing approved invoices to CHANGE the customer details on an invoice leaves the system wide open for tax fraud.

To reply to Tim Sneller I can see your point regarding sales ledger invoices but a lot of the commentators are referring to the invoices within the purchase ledger where approving an invoice for payment which subsequently needs to be unapproved is an issue. Copying the invoice in question and saving for approval before deleting the approved invoice is the current way that this issue has to be addressed but then you are losing the history attached to the invoice that was initially input plus it's ok if it's just one or two invoices but if you have a batch of invoices that need to be removed from approval this really is not an acceptable solution. Being able to unapprove the original invoice keeps all the history visible as well as showing that the invoice went from approved back to waiting approval which is also useful.
Considering all the changes (downgrades) that Xero has recently introduced it's amazing that this issue remains.

I am just a user, and do not speak for Xero - But here is my view on this.

What do you want to do to the invoice that requires it to be unapproved first? Is it just that it needs to go back into the approval loop?

The system currently allows a DRAFT invoice (One that is NOT APPROVED) to be DELETED - No Trace in history or anywhere.
The current situation where the invoice has to be VOIDED, means that the invoice number cannot be re-used, and at the end of the year, your accountant and auditor can see all of the voided invoices, and what happened to them. Whether they were sent to clients by email etc etc. This reduces the opportunities for tax fraud. At the very least, the system would now have to retain the audit trail for the invoice, prevent the draft invoice from being deleted, and prevent the invoice number from being re-used.

Allowing an invoice which has been approved, and potentially printed, and sent to a customer, to then be UNAPPROVED could be used to defraud HMRC etc.

Suppose you have invoiced a customer, and they then pay in cash. If you can UNAPPROVE it, and then DELETE it, you can pocket the cash and there is no trace of the transaction. The customer could produce an invoice, but you could claim it was a fake. XERO would have absolutely no trace of the invoice, and no audit entries, and you could re-use the invoice number.

This does of course raise the issue that XERO currently allows any
part of an approved invoice to be changed, including the Name, Terms, line items and totals. This is also open to fraud,

This is getting to the point, that if not implemented, we will be looking to off platform from Xero. What's the point in having an ideas forum.... if Xero never listen to their customers feedback for essential features?

This is becoming more important to us as we grow. Please implement it!

I’m a bit with James this has been around as an obvious issue for ages. Lots of votes and comments.

If does not appear anyone at Xero is actually paying any attention to these forums. Something as simple is this is just ignored, and this is just one example of many. This is a joke.

Time to find a new accounting solution.

After all the comments its hard to believe that your programme writers have no clue on how to implement such a crucial feature . It would be good if we your paying customers can get some results regarding this . Thanks

That something so simple and so important has not been implemented beggars belief.

Such a simple thing for you to introduce and certainly more important than the some of the upgrades (downgrades!) that you've introduced recently.

Seems they only upgrade what they want, this along with adding additional reply to email addresses should be something that's done not dependant on the number of votes to get their attention and then to only consider doing.
It would also be nice to be able to attach copies of invoices to statements when sending instead of having to send two separate emails, currently I download and attach the statement to invoices and then send and that's a pain when you have multiple ones to send.

This really is an important feature to add. I have accidentally "approved" (rather than submitted for approval) on a number of occasions, and it either requires a complete invoice re-do, or an email to the approver to let them know that I accidentally approved it so they need to check it and send...

Why have Xero Developers not updated their program to enable this feature?
Do they even look at these comments?

Is someone within Xero able to provide an update to everyone as to when/whether this feature will be enabled?

Maybe we should all contact support?
https://central.xero.com/s/contact-support

Voiding an invoice leaves a trace in the audit and looks suspicious.
It really would be great to be able to reverse the approval without the need of making a mess in records.

Come on Xero. This is getting silly. Give your clients the features they need.

Hello All
Please, make sure that you've clicked "vote" at the top of this page. More votes will highlight the idea to the Xero team.

I have been requesting this for three years and still nothing. It’s such a basic but critical feature.
What is the reason for not having in the app?

this is critical - Sage has this feature!!!

It would be extremely helpful to have this function. To have to void and re-enter bills mistakenly approved if messy and time-consuming.

Would be great to have this option - esp in accounts receiveable -
Would really like to be able to resave it as a draft invoice if I've clicked approve by mistake.