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45 votes
Hi everyone, we appreciate why some customers would like to have bills that are still in a draft or awaiting approval status included in reporting results.
These transaction types do not impact the general ledger until they are approved within your organisation, which is why they cannot be included in the Profit & Loss report.
Understand that is not within the report that you're asking here, however the Payable Invoice reports (Summary and Detail) can be run to include these transaction types, so you could get a view of the amounts related to these type of transactions.
We want to be upfront that this isn't something we have intentions of developing financial reports to accommodate for in Xero.
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Michael Sudfelt
commented
Hi @xero - have you put anymore thought into how invoices 'awaiting approval' can be accounted for more appropriately? It rears it's head all the time, our dashboards are never a true reflection, we can use the xero cash flow forecasting effectively and I'm sure there are other areas that it effects.
Wondering if we could perhaps arrange a time with someone from your products team to chat over the challenge and see if there is a better way this can be dealt with?
An error occurred while saving the comment Michael Sudfelt
commented
Hi There,
I've come across another issue with this. I need to be making some claims for work we have done during the month, of which I have been checking a custom report against the specific jobs. It has now become apparent that while an invoice is awaiting approval, it does not show in these reports.
Then trying to find the invoices in the awaiting approval section is like trying to find a needle in a haystack as there is no job codes / references in this view (that I can find). I'm very likely missing claiming everything we're entitled to be claiming... Help?
An error occurred while saving the comment Michael Sudfelt
commented
Good Morning - Just checking in on this one again, as again it is proving to provide inaccurate reporting for our business.
@xero - what advice do you have for us on how we can best manage this situation until (hopefully!) you make some upgrades to the program so it accounts for these liabilities correctly.
An error occurred while saving the comment Michael Sudfelt
commented
This really is an important issue in my opinion.
Appreciate that different businesses have different levels of bills that actually end up getting approved, but I would think the very vast majority of businesses P&L would be more accurate if the "awaiting approvals" were accounted for.
We can't rely on the cash flow forecasting, and all of these extra tools are rubbish without having the awaiting approval invoices accounted for correctly as the liability they are.
As simple switch that the user can decide on how they are accounted could / would be an easy solution?
Michael Sudfelt
supported this idea
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23 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Michael Sudfelt
commented
Thanks Anita - that sounds painful!
An error occurred while saving the comment Michael Sudfelt
commented
Adriana - 100%
@xero if there is a reason why it's a good idea to not be showing this, could you help us understand?
An error occurred while saving the comment Michael Sudfelt
commented
Hi @PaulHodges - thanks for pointing me in this direction from the Xero Central page. Looks like my issue has been raised a long time back.
This awaiting approvals issue goes much further than just showing of a dashboard. Xero, from what I can tell, basically pretends an invoice awaiting approval does not exist. They don't have impact on P&L, meaning that the profit is overstated by anything awaiting approval.
I can't understand why it is not accounted for as a liability in the system. Sure, some of them might not end up being approved, but I suspect the very vast majority of invoices awaiting approval will end up being approved and are real liabilities. Even if they are not approved, I suspect the large proportion of them would just need the invoice to be 'corrected' and that it is still a liability of some description.
I've had feedback from Xero in the past that not all businesses are the same - fair enough. Could we have a user / business setting on how we individually want to account for invoices awaiting approval? Seems like it should be a fairly simple enhancement to make, and would certainly help make the accounting software a bit more beautiful :)
Michael Sudfelt
supported this idea
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Thanks @Nevin Lau!
There is another similar post about how awaiting approvals don't show up on the dashboard either - pretending the liabilities don't exists until they are approved.. The whole way Xero approaches awaiting approvals needs a bit of a look at - strikes me like it should be a really easy fix to help us get accurate information in our reporting. Without these being accounted for, alot of the reporting is garbage. We can't use the xero cashflow tools, because these invoices are ignored.
If xero have a reason for not including them, I'd love to know, and if they can help me understand how to better manage accounting for invoices in awaiting approval I'd love to know.
@Kelly - you mention different businesses having varying levels of assurity around this, when might a business not want to know / account for invoices that are awaiting approval? I assume you would be able to see some data around the percentage of invoices that get loaded into awaiting approval that end up going through? If different businesses want to account for them or not, could we have a setting where each business can decide to include or exclude them from our reports / dashboards / cashflows etc etc??
https://productideas.xero.com/forums/939198-for-small-businesses/suggestions/46710808-dashboard-awaiting-approval-in-bills-section