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We also set a due date for bills that are in dispute a long way into the future, but it's not a foolproof way of dealing with this since someone still managed to batch them for payment :(

Hi Joan

We had the same issue but rather than deleting the invoice, we set the due date far into the future so if selecting bills for payment based on the due date, it wouldn't be selected. Then once dispute settled, can either reset the due date, change the amount or apply a credit note.

If a bill has been approved for payment then an issue arises and we want to make sure that it doesn't get paid, it's essential to be able flag it as in dispute.
Otherwise, we have to delete the bill then put it on again and not approve it.

However, this option is very flawed because now we don't know which ones are awaiting normal approval and which ones are in dispute.
This has led to bills being deleted and redone on more than one occasion.

This is a business-critical function as others have said already.
I am surprised you are not considering it when it is so clearly wanted by your customers. Come on Xero, would it be too much to ask to add it to the contact summary page where the drop-down menu is on each transaction? Or a tick box within the transaction screen to put the transaction on hold/disputed??

Both are as important as each other. It is a must to stop payments to suppliers accidently when a bill is in query/dispute

Having both the option to highlight either a bill or invoice as 'in dispute' would prevent a lot of errors and help with communication across staff.

This is CRUCIAL! both for bills and invoices.

Thank you for starting a new thread - again.....

This wipes out all 000's of comments on all previous threads, and starting again is ignoring all our previous requests - Why is such a thing not even in development ideas for bills? i have been following this request since early 2019!

I'm lost for words....after all the requests for this feature, you don't actually have any plans to implement it!!!! why bother asking us then.....

So here's a question for you: why was this not implemented in Xero at the outset? It's not as if this isn't a standard part of any other accounting system - at least in every one I have used over the past 30 years or so. Perhaps you thought everyone else had got it wrong, and this isn't an essential feature every business with more than one accounting person needs.
I defy you to give a sensible answer to that one

After 25 years of using Sage I recently switched to Xero, sadly not everything in Xero is an improvement, Not being able to mark purchase invoices as disputed is one glaringly obvious disadvantage over Sage. Whilst a workaround is currently possible it's not ideal nor pretty. Xero don't seem to understand how important it is to ensure bills aren't mistakenly paid when a bill or invoice is disputed/queried. Xero - please reconsider this request, it really shouldn't be too difficult or onerous to add a check box or flag!

why is this something you have no plans for????????

it's fundamental to be able to stop invoices being automatically paid. i do not understand why this isn't a standard feature and it needs to be implemented asap

why ask our opinions if you are not willing to listen. there are hundreds of comments on the original post asking for this, all saying the same thing but you have no plans for it, are we wasting our time asking?

"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"

So you want our feedback but you aren't bothered about actually listening to it because you're too busy changing the look of the bills screen to a god awful blockey piece of eye pain that no-one asked for, got it.

I'd like to see this. At present, if I enter a bill and someone outside the accounts dept raises a query on it, there's nothing I can do within Xero to make this immediately obvious. A flag would be a great help when I pay a month's worth of bills - some suppliers provide 3-400 bills per month.

This really is an essential feature. My company used this regularly on Sage when we were a much smaller business, and now we are larger it is a vital part of streamlining processes as the company expands. We cannot leave invoices as Awaiting Approval as they do not appear in the ledgers, therefore misrepresenting our accounts to the Exec Board, but we risk paying disputed invoices once they have been approved. In addition, we lock our accounts each month so that previous periods do not change, so if an invoice is left in Awaiting Approval, we have to amend the date as once the accounts are locked they will not drop in once approved if the date is prior to the lock date. This makes the tax date wrong in the accounts and the 'solution' of amending the references is not ideal as you cannot then change this again once you have locked the accounts.
It is baffling that something that is crucial to businesses maintaining accurate accounts and managing cashflow, is not seen as an urgent area for development.

"But to give clarity, currently we do not have plans for developing a flag for bills, or sales invoices."

Why not!?!?!

This is such a basic request to be able to add a 'flag' against a bill - lots of apps/software provide flags why can't Xero? I upload ALL supplier bills into Xero, code them and send for approval. However, as bills sat in draft and awaiting approval DO NOT show in the ledger for accounting purposes I often have to submit for awaiting payment to have them added to the ledger - this is where I have an issue as I dont want them paid if they are in query. Another scenario is, they are in awaiting approval and some may have a query and if the latter are flagged I wont have to keep opening them to find out "Oh that's in query" and move on - the same goes for INVOICES as well - FLAGS FLAGS FLAGS please!

Disappointed to hear that Xero are not developing the 'in dispute' for sales and purchase invoices

This is an essential feature. As with others, unimpressed that you have moved this to a different thread to restart the counter on interest in this feature.

Here's a Linked in group - perhaps taking this to the social media will help Xero to reconsider.
Xero Discussions (27K members) https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1415817/
Xero is actively posting about how great and wonderful they are - which is just an insult to the user community.

What is stopping Xero from being able to do this?

In real world scenarios, sometimes supplier bills cannot be approved because they are incorrect. Sometimes suppliers make genuine mistakes and charge the incorrect price. We then have to dispute this with them and somehow have to track it to ensure that the wrong amount isn't paid.

Why shouldn't we expect that our accounting software can do this? That's where the bills awaiting payment are generated from.

It just makes a lot of common sense that this should have been a feature a long time ago.

Despite the new thread, this remains a critical requirement. Invoices have to be booked for all sorts of reasons (recovering VAT for example) but may need to be held for payment. I do find it extraordinary that Xero have no plans to introduce this.