How to approve Xero bills in bulk

Short answer

1. Open Business > Bills to pay > Awaiting approval.
2. Tick the bills you have checked.
3. Click Approve if the button is there.
4. If it is not, approve each bill from its own page.

Before you start

• You need a Xero role that can approve bills.
• Sort the list by supplier or amount, so the odd ones stand out.
• Open any bill you have not seen before.

The manual way in Xero

1. Go to Business > Bills to pay.
2. Open the Awaiting approval tab.
3. Tick the box beside each bill you have checked.
4. If an Approve button shows above the list, click it.
5. If no button shows, open each bill and click Approve on its page.
6. Open the Awaiting payment tab to see the approved bills.

Limits to know:

• You can only approve the bills your role allows.
• Xero Product Ideas has requests to bulk approve and bulk edit bills. Treat a feature as missing until you see it in your own organisation.
• If you need to change a line, edit the bill first, then approve. Xero has no bulk edit for bill accounts.

The Pulsify way

1. Bills land in the Pulsify queue after they are read and checked.
2. Use the My turn view to see the bills waiting on you.
3. Tick the bills you have checked and choose Approve. Bulk approve works on each bill on its own.
4. A bill that cannot be sent, for example a line with no account, is refused. The rest go through. Open the refused bill and fix it.
5. Pulsify creates each approved bill in Xero.

Bulk reject and bulk archive work the same way from the queue. A bulk reject takes one optional reason for all the bills it rejects.

Tip: set up Auto-approve rules on the Approvals page for bills you always approve, such as a fixed monthly supplier. Those bills skip the queue.

Worked example

Example Plumbing Supplies, Example Electricity and Example Freight Services send 30 bills in a week.

Group	Bills	What you do
Fixed monthly suppliers	12	Auto-approve rule, or tick and approve
Regular suppliers, usual amounts	15	Tick and bulk approve
Unusual amounts	3	Open each, check, approve

You approve 27 bills with a few clicks and look at 3 closely.

Common mistakes

• Ticking everything because the list is long. Sort first and open the odd ones.
• Approving without checking the account on each line.
• Expecting bulk approve to fix a bill with a missing field. It will refuse it.

Next step

Try an invoice and approve a batch from the queue. Setup is in the approval workflows guide.