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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Antoinette Micallef commented
It seems that Xero will only respond to comments made on the Trustpilot website.
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Gemma Foley commented
How do we get a response from XERO???
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Clair Chapman commented
I would like to add my support for this idea. As we grow this becomes more of an issue, we want invoices posted to the ledger with the ability to flag as in dispute so that they don't accidentally get paid. At the moment we are working with 2 systems, one those invoices approved on xero and then separately a spreadsheet of invoices not yet posted as they are in dispute. Not ideal! We need an accounting system that can cope with this basic function please. i would suggest that this operational issue would be more important than improving the bill list view
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Fiona Mallion commented
Came on to add this as an idea only to see it's here already. Unbelievable that this isn't available having moved recently from Sage. Thank you for the work-arounds which I've just read through to help for now.
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Chris Curlett commented
With 1,100+ supporters, you would have thought XERO would be falling over themselves to get this done.
As usual, they ignore their customers' requests.
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Sara Martin commented
so i asked JAX how do i put a bill in query, and got back ...
Could you please clarify what you mean by "put a bill in query"? Are you looking to dispute a bill, record a bill, or something else?i responded with...query a bill and stop it being paid.... and got back ....
I can't complete the task as it's beyond my current capabilities. For more
details, visit About Just Ask Xero.it would seem it will always remain beyond Xero's capabilities as they just don't want to address this no matter how many complaints they get
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Gemma Foley commented
I resorted to commenting on their social media adverts yesterday. Nobody bothered to reply to my comment though :-(
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Chris Curlett commented
Xeros motto is "pretend to listen to xero BUT do nothing.
What an insult
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Gavin Smith commented
@Yubi Sah - just take a look at any of the community suggestions they are all 5-10 years old and no action from Xero.
Xero does not give a **** about it's users or implementing changes that would actually benefit us , rather they waste time and money on implementing things like the "New Invoicing' that no one asked for and is hated by majority of users or this useless JAX.
I have a question for JAX (Just Ask Xero) - When are you going to listen to your users!! -
Yubi Sah commented
Interesting to see the feature requested over 3 years ago, the highest voted thread and yet Xero decides to ignore it.
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Maria Martin-Perez commented
it has been half a year since your last update, could you please let us know if you are working on it yet?
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Maria Martin-Perez commented
FLORENCE PUA - if you only leave the invoices as draft or awaiting approval , when you run reports or run the balance sheet or the trial balance of the profit and loss accounts .... those invoices do not show. So you accounts would not be correct
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Paul Rosser commented
My workaround is to add "DO NOT PAY" after the invoice number as that shows up in the report I run off.
Similarly, I add one of the following after the Supplier name "- DD/SO/CARD" to make sure those aren't paid manually.
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Daniel Coates commented
Almost as important as the one where you can set a payment method that we don’t have….so on the bills to pay you can aeee what’s DD and what needs manual payment!
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Gemma Foley commented
I agree with Chris! The workaround ideas are all very helpful but it's taking the heat away from Xero when this is a simple function that SHOULD be available in accounting software. Xero, you really need to listen to your users, they are the back bone of your company. Without users your software is useless!
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Chris Conroy commented
Agreed Gemma!
And why are we all talking about workarounds? This isn't something odd, unusual or sorcery, it's a "in dispute" flag which should be in any basic accounts AP system, isn't it?!
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Stuart Mohamed commented
Some great idea's on here for workarounds.
Personally, I am using the method of prefixing the invoice/reference number to QUERY or DO NOT PAY and then add notes. For me, it is more important that these invoices are not paid than whether they appear on reports or not. If any of the invoices are significant enough in value, I'll make an accrual for what I believe to be the correct amount so that it at least appears in a P&L report.
I like Sara and Lyall's way of working but let's be honest, this is a basic function that really ought to have been addressed by now.
Is anybody else imagining that Xero's developmemt team consists of maybe 2 or 3 people?
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Lyall Zweck commented
Sara's is a good way to handle the situation.
Another way is to create a credit note for the amount you are disputing. Send the credit note to the supplier as your claim. Allocate it to the invoice, then the amount that will be paid deliberately or accidentally will be the amount that you believe you owe.
When the supplier issues a credit note, adjust your credit note to match if necessary. If your claim is rejected, remove the credit note and pay the balance of the invoice.
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Sara Martin commented
Hi All,
We pay our invoices by scheduled payment date as they are generated in another system and transferred in. When they are in query I just change the payment date to Xmas day for instance so they never feature in the payment run until they are sorted and then I revert it back to a sensible date when the query is sorted. This was the invoices have the correct dates and are accounted for but don’t get paid.
No one listens. I started this thread years ago and Xero just change it and restart it multiple times to make it look less popular when the numbers get high. -
Gemma Foley commented
Hi Chris :-) Frustrating, isn't it? As you, and all of us have said, it is a basic function, and Sage has had it for years. Xero, If you want to compete with Sage, you need to address this ASAP before you start losing custom! I know if this is not something that is addressed fairly quickly, I will be moving our custom to somewhere that can accommodate a basic requirement.