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, 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 😊
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Emma Rosenblatt (Accounts) commented
Please add this feature! The issues created from not having this feature are mind numbing.
Below comments are expressing their desperation for this feature and we have had no response since November ??? Our businesses are struggling because of the lack of well thought out updates from XERO. Honestly, a lot the new features feel like a waste of time because the lack of usability. For example, the new note section in contacts was almost a waste of time. You can't add multiple notes just one big paragraph, the aren't time stamped, the user's name who uploaded the note is not recorded, pop-ups aren't even a thing so the only time you see the note is by going all the way into the contact which is ridiculous because you basically never visit a contact unless updating details or making a new one.
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Abby Anderson commented
100% this should be a feature. I have been asking for this for years! Years ago on Sage (desktop), this was an easy switch on / switch off flag button. Countless errors occur when clients pay invoices from PDF Aged Payables report and forget that there is a dispute on some, then pay them by mistake.
It's a bookkeeper's nightmare then to unpick the payments made, what the real overdue invoices are and remember what the originally disputed invoices were......I am having to export Aged Payables report to csv/excel, reformatting the cells to highlight which ones are disputed but I have to refer to my other spreadsheet (the log of disputed invoices) to remember which ones I need to highlight in the new report BEFORE I send it to my client. Seriously time consuming and it really doesn't have to be. Please please please, make this a priority on the next roll out of updates - I beg you! Thank you.
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CIAMPA ENGINEERING commented
Bills should be able to be entered and marked as "on hold".
You need them in there, as they will have to be paid at some point and for true reporting, but you'd like to hold off on payment for some reason. -
Jacqui Varley commented
this would be a great thing to have rather than haveing to keep manual records of disputes.
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Nicola Wilson commented
Not adding such a simple feature, makes what should be a simple task into a manual one that relies on someone's memory. This creates internal errors and suppliers to be paid what they shouldn't. Come Xero, you can change the entire way we create reports into a very complex one, yet you can add this?
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Jenece Robinson commented
This is critical, I have been waiting for years for this. Come Xero.......... Do Better
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Lesley Greenwood commented
This would also be great for purchase ledger.
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Heather Heward commented
This is critical for a business. Due to the lack of a flag I have made the decision not to post the disputed supplier invoices, just to make sure it doesn't get paid accidentally. How is that right? This should be a standard function for any accountancy software. Come on Xero, sort this out!
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Neil Phillips commented
Hi helen
Fully agree.
For us we set the due date about 3-4 years in the future, we select invoices for payment by the due date. This way you can continue to get alerts for duplicates.
You do have to remember to reset the due date once issue resolved.
Not sure why we have to think of work arounds for a standard accounting feature.
Neil -
Helen MacGregor commented
Don't know why you wouldn't want to do this. We have so many invoices that we dispute with suppliers its sometimes hard to keep a track of what not to pay. Currently we are physically writing HOLD against the invoice number, but this doesn't help with duplicating invoice entry as no error is flagged because the invoice references are different.
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Emma Rosenblatt (Accounts) 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 Rosenblatt (Accounts) 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.
Thanks