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Hi Gemma, and everyone else, I think the answer to your question is no, no one listens, I commented over two years ago, and this thread must be older than that. It's such a basic function as we all say, but nothing happens - see the four admin responses, what a laugh. I've given up, so frustrating for something that has been included in accounting systems since the days when they were bespoke programs! FFS Xero, get on it, please!!!

As Debbie Jones has commented, we keep anything in dispute as a draft bill and then have to bring in an accrual for it so that it's included for reporting. Total faff when we should just be able to mark it as in dispute.

We recently paid an invoice that was in dispute by mistake, which forced us to find a workaround. Here are the methods we considered:

Keeping bills in draft or awaiting approval, but this prevents the amounts from showing in reports.
Using the planned date field, only completing it if the bill isn't under query.
Adding a comment in the reference field.
Currently, we use both the planned date and reference field methods, as relying solely on the planned date isn't robust enough. However, this approach requires editing the invoice to change the reference each time a condition is met, which is cumbersome and doesn't prevent the invoice from being paid.

I'm not a computer expert, but it seems a simple tick box to mark a bill as "not to be paid" along with a warning banner would suffice. This feature should be a high priority, given the interest from users, as evidenced by the votes on this post (and potentially others on the same topic, splitting the vote). The additional time wasted on workarounds by thousands of users for something seemingly straightforward is baffling.

For comparison, I found that in Sage, you can simply click "dispute" and select a reason. Voila.

If anyone else has other workarounds, please share them with the group as It looks like we'll need to find our own solution to this issue!!

Does anyone actually respond to these comments? This should be a basic function for accounting software.

Any update on this feature. We have a few people working in our accounts department. We can't rely on people remembering an invoice is in dispute with a supplier!!

Has there been any improvements to this feature as it would really benefit my company?

It would be useful if we could mark a bill as disputed/on hold so that it doesn't get added to a payment run and paid when it shouldn't have been. Not everyone using the software will know if a bill is on hold or not.

This is absolutely ridiculous; this is far more important than bills list views!! Yes there are work arounds but we shouldn't have to any other software even the old accredo had this function with the ability to add a reason why it is on hold.

Need a flag to show a bill has been disputed or in query so that it is not paid in error

@Stacey - I currently add a note in the reference part of the bill after entering the bill number so when looking at the Awaiting payment it shows up there alongside of the invoice/bill. I've taken to adding if they are Direct Debits or AP's also as part of the reference as it makes it easier for anyone looking at them. I even make a note if a copy of the bill is still to come and then just remove that once it comes as we need to account for those in our reports as well in some cases.
Not an ideal solution but would enable you to know which bill is in dispute and could have more details in the history about why. I've attached a sample of a DD and once it was sorted you could just remove the reference but still retain the history.

Please make a way to flag a bill to be held for payment once the bill is entered, but so that the bill is recorded in the GL. Currently awaiting payment etc doesn't hit the GL which is frustrating. Entering a note for each separate bill that is held for payment is time consuming and you have to go into each bill to see the note which is time consuming.

It would be great if there were a way to flag a bill to be Held for Payment under Awaiting Payment, so that the bill is recorded in the GL, but is flagged so that we know not to pay it. I know you can enter a note, but you have to go into each bill to see that and it is a pain. For example if the bill is approved and you want to show it in the GL, but you don't want to pay it because there is a dispute over a snag list or timeliness etc.

Lawfusion software had this feature, very useful to prevent accidental payment

Ability to mark approved invoices as "do not pay" for those invoices that you do not want included in the payment runs

"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.

Totally agree with Rachel and Sarah - this needs to change.

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.

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.

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 ?

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!