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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Kelly Nour commented
As Xero does not have the standard functionality of a document (invoice) date and document posting date, we have to enter a supplier invoice in the same month as we receive it to capture the cost correctly, even if the is a dispute on the invoice. Having the ability to flag it as "In dispute" eliminates the possibility of it being paid by mistake
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Philip Hankers commented
Changing the Sales invoicing by just moving functionality around and in the process make the resulting layout less user friendly compulsory is clearly more important to Xero than adding the "on hold" bill functionality.
Shame on Xero's "development" priorities.
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Chris Curlett commented
COME ON XERO DO SOMETHING USERS NEED TO HAVE DONE.
Less condescending emails and more improvements would make a change.
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Joel Mansford commented
Coming round to 6months and still no sign of this...
As a software developer I can't understand why this is taking so long? -
Antoinette Micallef commented
Hi all
If you want Xero to notice, you need to leave a review on Trustpilot
https://au.trustpilot.com/search?query=xero
There are many overseas users leaving a review you might like to see then leave your own review. -
Julie Sutton commented
@Sarah - one HUGE downside of marking a bill as paid before its actually paid is that it disappears off the short term cashflow forecast in Xero ..... I have queried this with Xero and been told "thats how its supposed to work"
Somewhat crazy functionality!
There is "suggestion" here if you would like to add to it https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198-for-small-businesses/suggestions/46818148-analytics-plus-include-bills-with-future-dated-p
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Sarah Verge commented
I'd like to be able to mark those bills that are going to be paid by Direct Debit, so that I don't pick them up in a payment run by accident. If I was approving bills straightaway, I'd add the Direct Debit payment when processing the bill, but all bills go for approval via ApprovalMax, so that's not possible.
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Carol HARDING commented
How long does it take to realise this is an important function, once everybody has had enough and found an alternative software package that focusus on what is important not on look.
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Yazz Bhatti commented
Any suggestions on an alternative accounting software provider instead of Xero? This software is getting 'beautified' without actually sorting out the lack of features.
Definitely time to jump ship.
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Mel Fenemore commented
@janice Mcgrother - 4 months is nothing in XERO world. There are suggestions for missing basic functions that have not been addressed for years if at all!
This suggestions and ideas options feel like another pointless exercise to make it appear our thoughts and opinions as paying users count! -
Janice Mcgrother commented
Hi Xero
It's been 4 months now and no further update. Can you advise if you have made progress with this? It is really causing a problem as there is nowhere on the supplier screen that you can see if the invoice is in dispute despite putting a note on the actual invoice and when you are talking about hundreds of invoices how on earth are we to know if it's disputed? Please fast track this!
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Judy Ford commented
Fully agree this is a very important requirement, if you pay an invoice inadvertently that is actually in dispute it it gives supplier impression the query is resolved. therefore makes resolving issue a lot harder
Hope this can be processed soon.
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Lu Fan commented
Adding the feature of flagging a bill as "in dispute" on Xero will not only streamlines the process but also enhance control over the payment workflow, ensuring that the relevant invoice is excluded from the payment run, preventing any inadvertent transactions. I believe it is an essential feature of an accounting software, so please do something for it.
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Farzana Mughal commented
This is very important so as we don't pay what shouldn't be or if they are duplicated invoices with different invoice numbers for which we await a credit note. By flagging we can cross reference.
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Annette Ainsworth commented
If a bill could be shown in red as on hold/inquery that would be very helpful. I hope you can do something for this very soon.
Thanks
Annette
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John Anibaldi commented
Hi Hannah,
if Xero developers could just add a "contacts group" column to the bills to pay awaiting payment list, then we users could create our own ON-HOLD or IN-DISPUTE contact groups and assign contacts as required. Then we could filter out these groups from the awaiting payment list prior to proceeding to batch. (refer attached mock up). I know this would mean filtering out all payments to a contact rather than just a single invoice, but I would have thought that it's a relatively quick solution to implement. Also, the byproduct is we can then create batches by different supplier groups, which would be handy. cheers -
yubraj sah commented
Is there any update on this Hannah? This would be a great feature to have
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Vivien Knight commented
I would also like to be able to change an approved bill back to awaiting approval. But let's get this small issue of putting an invoice on hold resolved?
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Mariete Santos commented
The ability to change a Approved Bill back to Awaiting Approval would help as well please.
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Arnis Veisbergs commented
Hannah,
Thanks for the update. Frankly it's just not good enough!
Are we going to wait for another year until the next update?
This is a basic function that should have been available from day 1.