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'
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.
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Bryony Stocks commented
Lawfusion software had this feature, very useful to prevent accidental payment
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Tropical Waste commented
"As a community team we're advocating on your behalf constantly to see where ideas can be worked on" - so KellyM you are being ignored as well. This does not give us confidence at all. Honestly I've never come across a Company so determined to ignore it's paying customers. we only moved over because our Accountant made us or we would have had to find another accounting firm. After 5 years they are looking at moving their OVER 300 Clients from Xero as well if the New Invoicing is not up to scratch when we are all forced over. They now will be keeping any Customers who do move if they choose to beforehand, as they can see how widespread the anger is across multiple Industry users on their books.
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Louise Bagatelas-Allen commented
Totally agree with Rachel and Sarah - this needs to change.
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Rachel Nichols commented
Sarah Verge, I cannot agree with you enough on this. The amount of time I spend with work-arounds to not pay bills by accident is painful and wasteful. Then having to explain to others what the method to the madness is, is just embarrassing.
The threat of Xero "improving" Bills, and this not being part of that improvement only leaves me to believe that they will be taking the same backwards steps that they have just made with Invoicing. If this is the case and actual improvements to the use of Xero are not made, we will be moving our business elsewhere. The software is meant to help not hinder.Come on Xero, instead of continuously spending millions on adverts to entice new clients, spend it once sorting out what really matters to your current client base. We will then be the biggest ongoing free advert of your product that could be asked for. Right now, I couldn't recommend it to anyone.
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Sarah Verge commented
My business has a turnover of £11m+ and I deal with a considerable volume of bills. There's nothing wrong with the add/edit bill pages in my experience. I assume you are going to make them look like [sales] invoices, the changes to which have made my job more difficult.
What would dramatically improve my working life is the bills list indicating which bills are to be paid by Direct Debit/credit card. This should be a flag on the contact's record, so a default method could be set, but it should be possible to pick the method or overwrite the default for individual bills. It's also important to be able to flag bills that should be excluded from a BACS payment run for any other reason, such as a dispute or because a credit note is awaited. -
Amanda Darby commented
This small but very important option is something i was very surprised not to see when we started using Xero as its been on the Sage system for years, and it to me it seems such a simple adjustment to make ?
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Chris Curlett commented
What a lot of Double Talk!
Frankly, it is XERO saying, "we are going to ignore users and treat them with contempt".
Come on, XERO, stop the long-winded, condescending stalling and just do it!
This is an insult to the very people that pay your wage!
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James Batchelor commented
Appreciate the update, but it's too little too late. I can't work with Xero anymore as it's clear you do not listen to your customers. You have spent a lot of time and money developing a new Invoice interface which nobody wanted or needed only to have to backtrack on this. I have now moved all my accounts away.
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Lu Fan commented
Apart from the critical feature to be added (Bills - Flag a Bill as 'in dispute/query'), could you please also seriously consider the following basic accounting software functions:
1. Accounting period instead of Lock Dates. This will allow the invoice date to remain as its original date rather than change to the 1st of the following month.
2. Flag duplicated invoices to avoid overpayments and save time on chasing suppliers for a refund.
3. Flag invoices to be collected by Direct Debit to avoid these invoices to be included in a payment run.
4.Increase the number of items that can be included in a batch when making payments. We currently have to create 2-3 batches every time!
5. Add a report function for the payment run, so there will be a list of payments detailing the supplier name, invoice number, invoice date, and amount. Currently, we have to copy and paste all the transactions into a spreadsheet to check for duplicated invoices, etc., before sending them for approval for audit purposes, and it is time consuming!
6. Under Contacts, add each school's name beside each transaction instead of running a report when suppliers are on the phone asking questions. We found the report is difficult to use, as it does not total the sum if there are multiple lines on one invoice!
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Carol HARDING commented
If it was up to me, I would change to something that already has this facility or takes its users seriously, beautify pages is not important some of the changes done have not improved views in my opinion. Another one that also seems to hard is to increase the number of items that can be included in a batch when making payments one of our suppliers has lover 300 every month so we have to do two batches to pay them.
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Louise Birnie commented
Hi. I'll be honest with you, I would much rather prefer the Dispute/ Query function than an improved bill list view!! How is an approved list view more important than this which can lead to incorrect bills being paid and manual time consuming reviews to ensure they are not! Wish Xero would actually focus on important functionality and understand the daily needs of finance departments. So fed up with Xero not making actual improvements and just making it look "prettier"
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Kathy Skinner commented
@ John - I've taken to putting either (DD) or (AP) next to the Invoice number so it shows up after a bill is entered and also if I do a batch payment I can ignore those ones. It also means if someone else is viewing unpaid bills they can see as well any DD or AP ones straight off.
Maybe that will help on the meantime. I may also put other comments there e.g "hold payment" then just add a note in the history as to why it's on hold. -
John Sinclair commented
Would be really useful.
Also, would be useful if invoices collected by Direct Debit could be flagged in some way to save them being accidentally included in a bank payment run. -
Louise Parrish commented
To be able to flag and add a note (for reminder purposes, eg need to query...) a purchase invoice sitting in drafts or awaiting payment, would be very useful. For comparison, Dext prepare allows you to do this.
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Ann Dalgleish commented
Currently we amend the invoice number to DO NOT PAY, although this is not a failsafe method. Before now, we have been sent a duplicate invoice to chase payment which has been put on Xero, but then the duplicate invoice number is not picked up.
It would be really helpful to have a flag for bills on hold. -
Greg Weedon commented
This would be an awesome feature. We currently are copying POs to draft bills, once we receive the invoice from the supplier we attach it and move it to awaiting approval, once we physically receive the order and verify the packing slip we move it to approved ready to pay. This has always been a headache.
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Sara Martin commented
Dear Xero,
why is this still under review....it has had over a 1000 votes on this version (you've split/ merged my previous versions of this request) how many votes does it need before you will actually action it with any speed.
Under review does not pacify anyone, pleaseget on with it.
and while you are at it bin 'new invoicing' it looks awful and i won't use it until i can't not -
Yubraj Sah commented
Hi Admin,
When can we expect this feature? The thread started in 2022 and is one of the highest-voted ideas. Xero really need to deliver on what customer wants rather than just making cosmetics changes like changing how the invoicing looks and upsetting customers.
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Michelle Priest commented
Approved bills cannot be reverted to draft but sometimes there will be an approved bill waiting for a credit note or it is to be paid by Direct Debit.
Notes can be added or the reference changed to include the message DO NOT PAY but, as it is not clear to someone in a hurry, these bills can accidentally be scheduled for payment in a batch and paid.
If there was a way to mark an approved bill as DO NOT PAY to prevent them being scheduled for payment it would be very helpful. -
Shipa Ahmed commented
Have option to mark supplier invoice as disputed - the invoices need to posted, so its inlcuded in the account but if you dont want to pay the invoice until a query is resolved, there should be option to mark it as DISPUTED/DONT PAY for companies who have different people doing different roles.