Enter your idea

@Beckie Flynn, In regards to your comment below on A/P, finalizing month-end closing by a hard deadline is critical for submitting accurate, compliant reporting to SARS.
Our current challenge is that once the period is closed, Xero (or our integrated system) locks, preventing any further amendments or bill approvals for that period. To ensure the financial figures reflect correctly on our statutory reports, we are forced to approve disputed bills before month-end, and then manually track them on a separate query list until resolved and paid.
Having a feature that allows us to provisionally post, freeze, or flag disputed bills during a locked period—without halting the entire compliance workflow—would greatly improve financial control and month-end accuracy.

Beckie Flynn - the problem with not approving Accounts Payable invoices is they then don't show in the profit and loss, VAT returns and cashflow reports. The bill may be fine, but there may be an issue with the date it is due to be paid or you may for example be awaiting delivery, or only want to part pay. So you don't want to pay it until those issues are resolved. This is why it needs to be flagged as in query/disputed but still included in reporting rather than left as not approved. Draft bills are not included in any reports. Once it is approved if it ultimately is to be cancelled it can be voided or a credit note issued as appropriate. This keeps your accounting/bookkeeping accurate but makes sure any issues are flagged before payment.

I requsted this for A/R. When I used a different system there was a drop down menu on the invoice line & you could pick a Q for query & then the date it was put in query.
Once clicked on you could put on the query notes & also a resoloution date.
We also moved the due date on by 7 days from the date that the query was resolved but this would not work for all companies.
On the statements the line still showed but it also showed the Q on the invoice line.
At the bottom there was a line that said Any lines with a Q on them are currently in query & being looked into. This way the customer knows not to pay & that we are looking at it.
I currently use a query log in Excel for A/R invoices in query which can be time consuming but it helps.

Why would you need this for A/P when you approve any invoices not in dispute for payment. If in dispute do not approve them, simple

Admin response noted. If you are looking at some generic flagging options, please include a flagging method for which suppliers are paid by BPay vs auto direct debit vs bank payments.

THANK YOU PAULA, someone else who actually gets it. We need the cost on our P&L for mulitple reasons but we don't want to pay the bill. Surely a simple Flag or TICK HOLD button is easy enough for these amazing developers to produce.

I also totally agree with the comment from Paula Williams who commented on October 30, 2026 2:28 AM.

This appears to be where users comment to hopefully make them feel like someone is listening to them.

It appears that Xero has no intention on fixing any issues raised, only to do things that they want to do and adding a subscription fee to it.

All we need is the ability to add a flag on the end of an approved Bill.
Simple, nothing more.

True, as mentioned previously, it appears that the only way to get Xero to listen is to vote with your feet and perhaps to add these comments to independent review sites like Trustpilot https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.xero.com and Product Review https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/xero.

All I need to be able to do is flag a bill as hold/problem/don't pay yet.
Complicated workflows, extra steps and routing is pointless for a solopreneur.
Currently my only option is to hold a draft and hope I remember! And if I inadvertently hit approve, I have no option to undo/revert back to draft.

so many of these "nice to haves" (aka essential basic functionality to anyone who actually works in any sort of finance role). It wouldnt be such an insult if there was any sort of movement or progress on any of them - they just continue to put in extra stuff no one has asked for and make it look pretty with a few swirls.
Xero quite clearly do not take any notice of their actual client base - so two demos booked in during November with alternatives as done with it now and think Xero will only start to notice when customers actually start voting with their feet rather than on these pointless "suggestion" boards

Completely agree with everyone else especially with Paula as we have the same frustrations with month end reports etc not showing these bills that will be paid at some point.

I agree with everyone else! This is not a feature we should be waiting for, it's a basic accounting feature which is available with other leading accounting software providers!

Xero really needs to prioritise this feature as a matter of urgency before existing customer switch to an alternative because that's what we're currently looking at doing!

This is a critical issue for us.
Bills need to appear in the P&L and month end figures. But sometimes they can be on hold for payment for months, so this would distort the figures. It would also mean they do not show up in cashflow forecasting as needing to be paid when the dispute is sorted. The point at which it is flagged for dispute should be after it has been approved. Please add this functionality as it causes so much extra work to not include it, and it has been available for years as a standard feature of the system in sage. There is no point keeping adding extra functionality through AI etc for "nice to haves" when critical functions are still missing. Especially when it looks like people have been requesting these functions over many years! We are doing the job and need this in place. Paying a supplier for an invoice which is in dispute can cause so many problems and as an external bookkeeper this makes it even more difficult. You are not always party to discussions with staff in the rest of the office/factory to know there is an issue if it can't be flagged on the accounting system.

As per the other comments today these suggested work flow rules are just adding further admin burden and processes - in particular to micro and small businesses who only have one or a limited number of people processing bills. More importantly if you have a funnel workflow, the bills will not appear in the nominals until approved and so your P&L will be incorrect, and the cash flow report of little use. Please add the flags we are asking for - actually doing the work day to day we know this is what will work.

I also agree with Lisa and Nadine, this doesn't really give us what we are asking for. This still relies too heavily on someone remembering that there is a problem. We need to be able to look in the suppliers account and see easily that there is a dispute. Bills in the draft or awaiting approval as not shown when looking directly in the contract page for that supplier.

Agree with Lisa Height below - two flags would be good: direct debits & in dispute. This could work as a stage we could move from approved to 'In Dispute' or simply 'Unapproved' for the disputed bills, but not for direct debits expected.
The new bills approval flow is good that it has the reject option, but sending it back to drafts doesnt necessarily alert us to ensure its followed up..would be better moving to "awaiting approval" or its own tab for disputes/issues/errors.
We also only use 'drafts' and 'approved' due to one person managing the accounts - 'awaiting approval' is pointless for us unless it gets used for the above - diputes.

The Bills Approval Flow doesnt necessarily address this request. We don't use the approval stage for bills as we're a small team and account processing all happens in one office. The majority of our bills are raised automatically and so would be cumbersome to take them back to approval stage just to achieve this workflow. There are two main flags that we would appreciate being made available in the system so that it doesnt have to just live in someone's head and they are Payments being withheld while issues are resolved - or bills to be paid by direct debit (not within batch payments)

a HOLD Button to stop paying a supplier due to dispute. Most accounting software programs these days have the ability to enter in an invoice, so the accounts from an P&L view are accruate, however the HOLD button would be to stop paying the supplier in case of a dispute.

Xero needs to make a new feature, after a bill has been approved, you need to be able to put a bill on hold and be able to add a note as to why, so the bill cannot be mistakenly added to a batch, till the issue has been rectified and release from hold.

Cant update the system but happy to update the price. This is just a flagged status. It cant surely take 2 years to do.

These options don't work if you already use the two available category types for other things and the category would not show on ageing, notes you need to click the notes to actually check this, amending the reference means there will not be a warning if there is a duplicate bill with the reference number, adjusting due dates changes ability to actually report on payment days etc and planned dates doesn't flag it as disputed as the planned dates may be adjusted for various reasons. This is critical and something other accounting packages have had available for many years!
Also if it is a bill where a direct debit is taken it would be marked as paid already and nothing indicating there is actually a query or to flag

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese introduce this. Thank you