The walkthrough
71.6 seconds. Captions are included in the film. Made with Nolan from an editable screenplay running in a real browser.
What the requester said
“it’s easier to have this feature if users approved the wrong invoices by mistake.”
Verbatim from the Xero Product Ideas board. Reproduced as a contiguous extract and checked against the harvested record.
Key moments
- Return an unsent, unpaid invoice to Draft.
- Warn when an invoice has already been sent or partly paid.
- Block the action when a filed return would be affected.
What we concluded
Has wider trade-offs
Unapproving an unsent, unpaid invoice is simple.
Once it has been sent, paid, or included in a filed return, the action needs safeguards.
Why we reached that conclusion
Xero had already accepted a comparable interaction for bills in the board snapshot we analysed, so the basic mechanism appears possible. Sales invoices carry an additional concern: a copy may already have been sent to a customer.
In the simplest case—nothing sent and nothing paid—the invoice can return from Awaiting Payment to Draft with little disruption.
In the more complex scenario we prototyped, the invoice had been emailed and partly paid. Returning it to Draft would also affect the allocated payment and its reconciliation, while the customer would still hold the original copy. An invoice included in a filed GST return may need to be blocked from this action altogether.
The useful version of Unapprove therefore depends on context. It can be simple for mistake recovery and provide clear warnings or restrictions when other records would also change.