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, 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.
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Siobhan Macleod commented
This is certainly much needed. Was certainly useful on our old software and something we utilised regularly. At least if the invoice is in the system and marked as on hold/disputed it won't get forgotten about or paid in error.
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Elizabeth Murray commented
A bill can be awaiting approval because it hasn't been processed yet or it can be awaiting approval because it's in dispute with the supplier. Currently I have to add an asterisk to the invoice number so that I know which bills are in dispute. I can't show invoices in dispute when I write to a supplier, it's a long winded manual edit. This is such a basic feature.
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Barbara Fusco commented
Hi,
Yes please, this is much needed! And also the possibility to mark it as "on hold for payment", something that would exclude the bill from the aged payables report (so a filter would be needed there too!).
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Barbara Fusco commented
Hi,
Yes please, this is much needed! And also the possibility to mark it as "on hold for payment", something that would exclude the bill from the aged payables report (so a filter would be needed there too!).
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Debbie Stancliffe White commented
Bills to Pay - Alert for DO NOT PAY/ON HOLD
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Emma Rosenblatt (Accounts) commented
This is not a problem until you need it. Having a bill in approved status appears to be right to pay, but when something happens or changes how can we make it a clear visual that the bill is in dispute without this feature? We can't... Sometimes the Supplier themselves needs to be on hold too, all future bills are not to be paid until whatever it is is resolved.
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Gillian Jackson commented
There are occasions when an approved bill to pay needs to be stopped for payment - there could be any number of scenarios this may occur.
Not having a function when you can hold or suspend a bill to pay or mark as disputed, or even hold a supplier contact is an issue in Xero
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Tara Yensch commented
The capacity to add bills as "on hold" would be an extremely helpful addition for clients who pay on receipt of goods. For some of our clients, they may see a 3-6 month delay in receipt of items and if these are allocated to awaiting approval, supplier reconciliations will be incorrect.
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Tom Dible commented
Being able to flag and add a note for disputed invoices would be ideal. Its a massive flaw in the system Xero not having this. As mentioned below its easy for payments to go through by mistake as there is no way to let other colleagues know in the organisation that an invoice is under query. It really is a very important part of bookkeeping and a system like Xero should have features like this as standard to make the process easy.
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Sharon Beaumann commented
As a new user I am really very surprised that this feature is not already in place. Putting an invoice on hold is a fundamental accounting requirement. Can you please get it added as soon as possible? The workarounds are simply not practical and payments can end up going through by mistake.
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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.