Bills - Flag a Bill as 'in dispute / query'
Ability to flag individual bills as in dispute
Purpose | To enable review and ensure the business does not make payment for a bill when it's currently 'under query'

Hi community, you may have seen our recent update on this like-minded idea for Sales invoice - Flag an invoice as 'in dispute / query'.
We'd like to confirm from a bills side of things that this is not something we have plans to develop at this time.
We're still interested to get a clearer understanding of users that'd like to see this developed for bills, and will continue to track this through the conversation here. If there's any change we will let you know on the thread here. Thanks
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Emma (Accounts) Rosenblatt commented
I am so confused by your response to this Kelly Munro, I feel like we have all made it pretty clear we want to be able to do the exact same thing for sales invoices as we do bills. If we don't like the look of something on a bill we have received and it is currently being renegotiated and for some reason someone may in the end refuse payment all together, from an accounts payable point of view they must be aware that the bill is not to be paid for until the issue is resolved. Flagging the bill would allow for clear and consistent communication for this situation.
This idea already has 136 votes and barely anyone votes or knows you can vote here plus there are two pages of comments on this page plus more on the original idea posted.
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Liz Verbeken commented
would be useful on the PL side too - query by account and by individual invoice/credit....
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Carol HARDING commented
This is far more important to me than the changes to the layout or look which worked perfectly ok before.
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Dayna Hobbs commented
Shocked that this is not something in the pipeline, the more I use Xero the more I realise it lacks the most basic and critical accounting software functions.
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Christopher Moore commented
This is an absolutely basic and fundamental function implemented in every other accounting system I've ever used or implemented - and that's quite a few across several decades!
I'd say it's as fundamental as deciding whether to record bill/invoice values or not; ie absolutely essential to any accounting workflow.
As others have described, bills received need to be entered onto the system but there must be a process to prevent any that are in dispute being paid, with the ability for accounting staff to see notes describing the problem, what a supplier needs to do to resolve it, and for the invoice to be cleared for payment as and when it's resolved.
While Xero has many neat features, this is one of a number of annoying functions which are absolutely standard accounting requirements and which Xero has somehow missed. The cavalier attitude of Xero staff to this implies a total lack of understanding of real world accounting process within the dev team.
Flash, glitz, fancy UI changes etc are all very well and fun to design and build, but for someone who runs a real business the basics - such as this issue, multiple price lists on sales and the ability to allow a negative stock value are way more important.
I've been using Xero for 18 months and love much of it, but am seriously considering the pain of migrating again SO SOON to something else, just to get the basics working as they should, rather than having to build external systems of my own to cover fundamental shortcomings.
Chris Moore
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Lee Jaques commented
This is a pretty basic requirement of an accounting system, as well as being able to add a clearly visible note to log the dispute. It would also be useful to be able to run reports on bills in dispute.
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Taryn Duns commented
To be able to capture a disputed invoice in your accounting system is a critical business function. At the moment I am having to write "disputed" before the bill / invoice number so I don't accidentally make payment & then remove "disputed" once sorted.
This does need to be addressed in Xero.
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Emma (Accounts) Rosenblatt commented
Both the Bills flagged as dispute and Sales invoice flagged as dispute would be handy options!
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Accounts Charlton Haynes commented
It is a basic accounting requirement to be able to dispute an invoice.
Especially under these difficult financial times it should be given priority.
If the development team can look into this asap.
Other accounting packages like Sage allow you to do this. -
Findex Software Support commented
Hi Xero
This option is essential IMO for companies with large numbers of creditors to track. Please lift the priority on this feature.
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Sharon Evans commented
Really need this to flag an invoice as disputed. Once an invoice (say purchase in my case) is approved by another member of staff and then ready to issue a payment - i sometimes can flag an issue with it as im ready to pay it - there is no quick click of a button to transfer this back to drafts (not ideal but better than in awaiting payment) so to flag it as disputed with a comment would be ideal. Sage used to offer this - cant see why Xero dont offer it.
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Teresa Snell commented
We also set a due date for bills that are in dispute a long way into the future, but it's not a foolproof way of dealing with this since someone still managed to batch them for payment :(
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Neil Phillips commented
Hi Joan
We had the same issue but rather than deleting the invoice, we set the due date far into the future so if selecting bills for payment based on the due date, it wouldn't be selected. Then once dispute settled, can either reset the due date, change the amount or apply a credit note.
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Joan Collins commented
If a bill has been approved for payment then an issue arises and we want to make sure that it doesn't get paid, it's essential to be able flag it as in dispute.
Otherwise, we have to delete the bill then put it on again and not approve it.However, this option is very flawed because now we don't know which ones are awaiting normal approval and which ones are in dispute.
This has led to bills being deleted and redone on more than one occasion. -
Miranda Gager commented
This is a business-critical function as others have said already.
I am surprised you are not considering it when it is so clearly wanted by your customers. Come on Xero, would it be too much to ask to add it to the contact summary page where the drop-down menu is on each transaction? Or a tick box within the transaction screen to put the transaction on hold/disputed?? -
Lucy Graham commented
Both are as important as each other. It is a must to stop payments to suppliers accidently when a bill is in query/dispute
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Emma (Accounts) Rosenblatt commented
Having both the option to highlight either a bill or invoice as 'in dispute' would prevent a lot of errors and help with communication across staff.
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Debbie Bradley commented
This is CRUCIAL! both for bills and invoices.
Thank you for starting a new thread - again.....
This wipes out all 000's of comments on all previous threads, and starting again is ignoring all our previous requests - Why is such a thing not even in development ideas for bills? i have been following this request since early 2019!
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Ben Linker commented
I'm lost for words....after all the requests for this feature, you don't actually have any plans to implement it!!!! why bother asking us then.....
So here's a question for you: why was this not implemented in Xero at the outset? It's not as if this isn't a standard part of any other accounting system - at least in every one I have used over the past 30 years or so. Perhaps you thought everyone else had got it wrong, and this isn't an essential feature every business with more than one accounting person needs.
I defy you to give a sensible answer to that one -
Roger Withinshaw commented
After 25 years of using Sage I recently switched to Xero, sadly not everything in Xero is an improvement, Not being able to mark purchase invoices as disputed is one glaringly obvious disadvantage over Sage. Whilst a workaround is currently possible it's not ideal nor pretty. Xero don't seem to understand how important it is to ensure bills aren't mistakenly paid when a bill or invoice is disputed/queried. Xero - please reconsider this request, it really shouldn't be too difficult or onerous to add a check box or flag!