Bills - Flag a Bill as 'in dispute / query' – Share and support customer ideas for Xero

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'

1,466 votes

AdminXero Team (Admin, Xero) shared this idea · 24 November, 2022 · Report… · Admin →

Accepted ·

AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded · 29 July, 2025

Hi community, we acknowledge the strong feelings in this idea and why you need a feature to flag bills directly within Xero. We really appreciate all your feedback and the detailed explanations of how this would help streamline your accounts payable.

We are dedicated to providing a solution for this over the longer term, but this will take some time requiring changes that sit beneath the face of bills.

In lieu of a direct feature for this we wanted to highlight some of the options discussed by the community here:

Add a note to the bill: A detailed note on the bill itself can serve as a clear internal reminder of the dispute.
Utilise tracking categories: Creating a specific tracking category like "Disputed Bills" can help you filter and report on these items.
Adjust the due date: Temporarily extending the due date can prevent accidental payment while the dispute is being resolved.
Update the reference to add a notation such as [reference number] - Do not pay
Adjust the planned date to be very far out in the future

We know these options won't fit all needs here, and we are invested in continuing to develop Purchase and more specifically bills in Xero to suit your needs.

We'll continue to provide updates with any progress that steps closer to enabling you to flag bills that are in dispute in Xero. Thank you for continuing to engage and share insights through this idea.

Show previous admin responses (4)

submitted ·

AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded · 02 August, 2024

We appreciate wanting to see more rapid movement, everyone. Having done a lot of exploration into this area our team have a good handle on the needs to solve this, however we want to be honest that development will be some time away with the team currently focused on improving bills list views and updating add/edit bill pages. For the time being to keep you up to date we’re going to move this idea back to Submitted until more active work takes place for this.

I can assure you this idea is the best place to be leaving feedback for this feature, and Xero Product Ideas as a whole is the best place to be sharing where you’d like to see change across Xero products. As a community team we’re advocating on your behalf constantly to see where ideas can be worked on, and this site is where our product teams regularly come to better understand and see where they can develop solutions for our customers alongside other priorities they’re balancing. You’ll see in many places we’re beginning to see how we can get our community members more involved in research and testing for ideas early on in the development process.

As soon as there is more news around the teams work in this space we will be back to share this with you all, here.

under review ·

AdminHannah G (Admin, Xero) responded · 28 November, 2023

Hi community, appreciate the want for more of an update from us on this highly voted idea. Since Kelly’s last message I am pleased to let you know that our product team has done some discovery work in this space. More specifically, exploring the different ways in which the problem could be solved in Xero, alongside understanding the technical challenges. The feedback you’ve shared has been really useful for our product team’s research 🙏

We recognise the importance of needing to know which bills are flagged, so people making payment can review whether a bill should be paid or not, to avoid inadvertent payment. Being able to improve this workflow is important to us and once we have solution concepts, we will be sure to reach out to this community for feedback.

Right now there are no specific time frames available as to when this might be worked on, but thought that the community would appreciate knowing that this is being looked into. As always we’ll return here when we have more to share 😊

submitted ·

AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded · 24 November, 2022

Hi community, you may have seen our recent update on this like-minded idea for Sales invoice – Flag an invoice as ‘in dispute / ( https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198/suggestions/44960557 ) query’ ( https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198/suggestions/44960557 ).

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

submitted ·

AdminXero Team (Admin, Xero) responded · 24 November, 2022

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Steve Wheat commented · 11 May, 2022 22:13 · Report

Would be very beneficial, would avoid invoices been paid in error and provide a clearer idea of current supplier liability

Submitting...
Bret De faria commented · 11 May, 2022 11:18 · Report

Very beneficial, would avoid invoices been paid in error and having to go through additional processes.

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Natalie Stokes commented · 10 May, 2022 20:52 · Report

This would allow bills to be included in the correct VAT quarter as well as see what is owing to a particular supplier and be able to keep track of any queries easier as they are all in one place and easier to chase them up if supplier doesn't reply.

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Katie Oppy commented · 03 May, 2022 15:56 · Report

This would definitely be beneficial to our business

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catherine lyons commented · 20 April, 2022 22:46 · Report

This would be so beneficial - please action

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Natasha Hamlet commented · 14 April, 2022 19:46 · Report

This is such an important feature for Bills. We approve the invoice when the item comes in, but want to dispute it if the item is faulty but there is no way of making this bill stand out to avoid being paid.

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Cathy Reardon commented · 11 April, 2022 00:20 · Report

Yes I would love this feature to be added as I have a supplier who regularly invoices incorrectly

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AdminXero Team (Admin, Xero) commented · 12 August, 2013 23:20 · Report

Ability to flag an invoice or bill when it’s in dispute or query.

Purpose: To ensure users do not pay an invoice/bill when it is currently 'under query/dispute' in error.

Submitting...