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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Julie Sutton commented
Users have been asking for this basic functionality for a long time yet Xero choose to continue to blatantly ignore the issue along with other basic requirements despite users asking - really don't see the point of these "ideas" as Xero ignore basically all of them. Even if they gave time frame it would be something .. but nothing!
ANY RESPONSE FROM A XERO EMPLOYEE ??
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Chris Curlett commented
XERO SEEM TO TREAT USERS WITH CONTEMPT. They ask for what the user wants, then when there are 100’s of votes for something, Xero just ignores the request. Their concern seems to be just window dressing.
Users who have shares in Xero should ask about this in General Business at their AGM
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Yazz Bhatti commented
Xero have already stated that they have no plans to develop this at this time. Read that as "Xero will not develop this, ever"
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Rebecca Rotheram commented
Why has no one from XERO commented on this since Nov 2022? It is the third top suggestion in terms of votes. Comments weekly. What is the point in inputting suggestions if xero just ignores them.
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Sandra Hamer commented
PLEASE add this feature, make our lives easier
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Kevin Holland commented
567 people are needing to flag bills and xero's response is a bland " this is not something we have plans to develop at this time." no explanation. Just basically another 2 fingers to the user. Leaving us undervalued and and uninformed. Why not add teh feature? Why not add features that have been left on these logs for 10 years!! Xero as a company are so frustrating
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Julie Sutton commented
Chris Curlett - not in Xero but you may want to look at EzzyBills which has approval workflows in place. INvocie wont be in Xero until fully approved though - Have to pay for it but it does integrate with Xero ....
Invoice wont be in Xero and so not visible though until approved in EB so not so great for reporting
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Chris Curlett commented
DEFINITELY needed in the Construction/Contracting industry where the Bill may be subject to Retentions and may not be payable for some time - even years - dependent on the Contract
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Chris Curlett commented
This also applies equally to Bills. XERO fails to have a system when Approval is required by two or more people prior to a bill being paid. This failure allows a greater level of Fraud as one person can control the payment of bills. NOT GOOD FROM A AUDIT PRTSPECTIVE!
By having a system/flag that has to be cleared prior to a Bill being approved means that at least there is a warning that a Bill should not be paid as it is under review. It is a visual prompt and also will stop the accidental approval/payment of a Bill
Naturally having a multi Approval system would resolve this issue!
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Georgie Styles commented
Definitely needed in construction industry where invoices can depend on a final site visit. Need for the supplier to be "frozen" or at the very least the invoice to be classed as "on hold".
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Chris Curlett commented
A very good idea as it highlights bills in dispute sp they are not paid in error. It would also be helpful to add a note that could be completed as to why the Bill is in dispute
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Kris Meyn commented
There are circumstances which lead to bills being approved but then require certain outcomes to be met before payment is released (Eg Work completion). As a result, it is beneficial to have the ability to quarantine approved bills without voiding or deleting. At this stage we manually push out the due dates which is not a preferred solution.
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Carson Cox commented
Not only is putting bills on hold is a bookkeeping must have, being able to put the supplier/contact on hold is critical.
If we're in legal disputes or they're going through liquidation/administration etc we need to be able to put the whole account on hold to ensure we don't accidentally pay a bill.A complete must have when dealing with a larger accounts them and multiple people working the same area.
We just came from an old school system that is still running Windows 98 framework and they had the ability to hold an account, I am still shocked this is not a feature that has been prioritised within Xero after all these years?
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Mariete Santos commented
If at lest we could save the Bills back to Awaiting Approval - after Approving. But once Approved it goes to Awaiting Payment tab and we can not change it...Wondering how is every one dealing with this issue???
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Heather Thomas commented
It seems that people have been asking for this constantly. Surely that is reason enough to act. Putting bills on hold after they have been approved has always been an everyday part of bookkeeping and should have been implemented in the initial set up of Xero.
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Matthew Kerry commented
As a business you need to know what you owe suppliers. But if a bill is in dispute and hence you are not paying, you should be able to have an option so it does not appear in what is due to be paid. For large purchase ledgers you could have a number of invoices disputed, and these would always show first as they have the oldest due date.
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Gill March commented
Marking a bill disputed is vital to stop it being paid by mistake. Also it would help if you could mark bills/suppliers that are being paid by Direct Debit, Credit Card etc. Please add these features as standard asap.
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Corina Hobson commented
Please can you put an dispute facility on supplier invoices. It is so easy to approve an invoice which has a dispute on it by mistake, and its annoying that they keep coming up when doing the bill approval routine.
I also have some, where some of the invoice has been approved but the other part is under dispute. In order to pay items that are ok I have to approve the invoices, pay part of the invoice, and then have to remember that the balance is under dispute and not pay them. I have marked them as being due well into the future but it would be nice to be able to see easily which invoices/balances are being disputed. Would be good to see these flagged up on the payables credit reports, and able to mark those accounts which are paid by direct debits. -
Neil Phillips commented
Hi Stuart
Fair point.
Most of the disputes are for the full invoice and even if only for part, withholding payment of the full invoice gives the supplier an incentive to resolve the issue.
Neil
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Stuart Isbister commented
Just to note my workaround for this which largely suffices and in particular with the new reporting could work for others (BTW not letting Xero off the hook for this) but just in case others might find it helpful.
I think putting a false date in the future is the wrong workaround - particularly if only part of the invoice is in dispute/needs to be held or the invoice needs to have its VAT reclaimed.
What we do is append the invoice no. with a '-W' (for Wait) and then if there is a specific amount might put 'W-70' (for instance) it appears to stand out pretty well as as long as we remember to remove the W when no longer in dispute (in the same way as an 'unclog' needs to be actioned.
It would help if Xero could explain the technical challenge here though as it does look like this is being ignored.