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DEFINITELY needed in the Construction/Contracting industry where the Bill may be subject to Retentions and may not be payable for some time - even years - dependent on the Contract

This also applies equally to Bills. XERO fails to have a system when Approval is required by two or more people prior to a bill being paid. This failure allows a greater level of Fraud as one person can control the payment of bills. NOT GOOD FROM A AUDIT PRTSPECTIVE!

By having a system/flag that has to be cleared prior to a Bill being approved means that at least there is a warning that a Bill should not be paid as it is under review. It is a visual prompt and also will stop the accidental approval/payment of a Bill

Naturally having a multi Approval system would resolve this issue!

Definitely needed in construction industry where invoices can depend on a final site visit. Need for the supplier to be "frozen" or at the very least the invoice to be classed as "on hold".

A very good idea as it highlights bills in dispute sp they are not paid in error. It would also be helpful to add a note that could be completed as to why the Bill is in dispute

There are circumstances which lead to bills being approved but then require certain outcomes to be met before payment is released (Eg Work completion). As a result, it is beneficial to have the ability to quarantine approved bills without voiding or deleting. At this stage we manually push out the due dates which is not a preferred solution.

Not only is putting bills on hold is a bookkeeping must have, being able to put the supplier/contact on hold is critical.
If we're in legal disputes or they're going through liquidation/administration etc we need to be able to put the whole account on hold to ensure we don't accidentally pay a bill.

A complete must have when dealing with a larger accounts them and multiple people working the same area.

We just came from an old school system that is still running Windows 98 framework and they had the ability to hold an account, I am still shocked this is not a feature that has been prioritised within Xero after all these years?

If at lest we could save the Bills back to Awaiting Approval - after Approving. But once Approved it goes to Awaiting Payment tab and we can not change it...Wondering how is every one dealing with this issue???

It seems that people have been asking for this constantly. Surely that is reason enough to act. Putting bills on hold after they have been approved has always been an everyday part of bookkeeping and should have been implemented in the initial set up of Xero.

As a business you need to know what you owe suppliers. But if a bill is in dispute and hence you are not paying, you should be able to have an option so it does not appear in what is due to be paid. For large purchase ledgers you could have a number of invoices disputed, and these would always show first as they have the oldest due date.

Marking a bill disputed is vital to stop it being paid by mistake. Also it would help if you could mark bills/suppliers that are being paid by Direct Debit, Credit Card etc. Please add these features as standard asap.

Please can you put an dispute facility on supplier invoices. It is so easy to approve an invoice which has a dispute on it by mistake, and its annoying that they keep coming up when doing the bill approval routine.
I also have some, where some of the invoice has been approved but the other part is under dispute. In order to pay items that are ok I have to approve the invoices, pay part of the invoice, and then have to remember that the balance is under dispute and not pay them. I have marked them as being due well into the future but it would be nice to be able to see easily which invoices/balances are being disputed. Would be good to see these flagged up on the payables credit reports, and able to mark those accounts which are paid by direct debits.

Hi Stuart

Fair point.

Most of the disputes are for the full invoice and even if only for part, withholding payment of the full invoice gives the supplier an incentive to resolve the issue.

Neil

Just to note my workaround for this which largely suffices and in particular with the new reporting could work for others (BTW not letting Xero off the hook for this) but just in case others might find it helpful.
I think putting a false date in the future is the wrong workaround - particularly if only part of the invoice is in dispute/needs to be held or the invoice needs to have its VAT reclaimed.
What we do is append the invoice no. with a '-W' (for Wait) and then if there is a specific amount might put 'W-70' (for instance) it appears to stand out pretty well as as long as we remember to remove the W when no longer in dispute (in the same way as an 'unclog' needs to be actioned.
It would help if Xero could explain the technical challenge here though as it does look like this is being ignored.

How many people need to vote and how long do we have to wait for this feature? The response from Xero is so underwhelming it actually leaves me speechless

Come on Xero, seriously!!

Hi Neil, this looks like a decent workaround, I might adopt this method. It’s just a shame and frustrating that the consumer has to develop imperfect workarounds when a perfect solution is well within reach.

And I feel that this particular problem like a few other problems that have a high vote count has dragged on so long now, that even if ( and it’s a big if) Xero addressed the issue with a permanent fix, there would still be a sour taste left in the mouth over it.

Xero should fix the problem.

My solution is to set the Due Date forward by 2 years, that way when I filter for the payments due this week it will be omitted and gets around the issue of not using the proper invoice number and missing duplicate processing.

Once the issue is resolved, I then reset the due date back to the original date or credit the invoice.

You can then also filter on disputed invoices by for example filtering for due dates more than 2 months old (in case there are really old disputed items

Sarah - I put "DISPUTED" before the invoice number. BUT that relies on me seeing that when raising payments, and also means that there could be duplicates as if the invoice number is entered again with DISPUTED it doesn't recognise a duplicate. It is not a good work around.

I use the 'planned date' function too, but now they have taken away the old style supplier reports, it automatically populates the blank planned dates with the due date and so I cannot run reports excluding them anymore!! Well done Xero!

Being able to flag purchase invoices (bills) as being in dispute was a feature in the pre-Windows version of Sage in the 1980s - I am that old! - which tells you that it's fundamental to a basic accounting system.

Kelly, you ask why it's so important: well, unless a bill is approved in Xero it doesn't hit the ledgers, so the expense and liability aren't reflected in the accounts and the VAT that could be reclaimed isn't picked up by the VAT return in Xero. However, there's often something wrong with a bill that involves some to-ing and fro-ing with the supplier, which means that it should be excluded from payment runs.

The only way I've found round this is to use the 'planned date' functionality and just not enter a date for something in dispute.

Totally agree, I have used Sage in the past but felt it wasn't keeping up with its competitors although all it had all the functions we're asking Xero for. Time for another look I think.

Arnis - You're not the only one in the partner programme considering the move. I know a particular platinum partner who have been challenged recently as to why they stick with Xero based on recent lack of tangible, useful, customer based progress. Maybe when those in the 1,000s of clients start migrating they'll wake up...