Unapprove an invoice or bill, one or many: a guide for Xero users

You can't: Xero has no unapprove button for an approved invoice or bill, and no bulk version either. The way back to draft is to void the document and copy it into a new draft. This guide covers that routine step by step, where it stops being practical, and how to do the same job on many documents at once.

Checked against Xero Central on 12 October 2026 and Xero Product Ideas on 24 October 2026.

The native way: void, copy, re-attach

Check the status first. An approved original does not become a draft: the workaround creates a separate document and leaves the original voided. Documents still in Awaiting Approval are a different case: the send back to draft guide covers that status. Xero's existing bulk void for eligible bills and supplier credit notes does not provide an approved-to-draft action (native bill options).

On the invoice request (more than 500 votes), Xero's reply of 11 August 2025 marks it "Not in pipeline" and says it has no plans to develop it in the foreseeable future. Among the interim suggestions is voiding the invoice and copying it to a new draft. On the bill request (more than 650 votes), Xero's reply of 20 November 2025 says the work needs groundwork first, with the Bills pages being rebuilt, and is not in the roadmap at the moment.

So the manual routine, for each document, is:

1. Clear what blocks a void. If a payment or overpayment is applied, remove it first: Delete an invoice or bill payment. If a credit note is allocated, remove the allocation: customer credit note or supplier credit note.
2. Change the number (sales invoices). Xero says that to reuse the number of an approved invoice you must change it before you void it (Delete or void an invoice). Open the invoice and edit the number, for example by adding "-V" (Edit an invoice).
3. Void it. For an invoice: Sales > Invoices, open it, click the menu icon, select Void, confirm. For a bill: Purchases > Bills, Awaiting Payment tab, open it, menu icon, Void, then "Yes, void" (Delete or void a bill).
4. Copy it to a new draft. Xero's articles say you can copy a voided invoice or bill to a new one. The bill steps are in Add and approve a bill.
5. Re-attach the files. Download each file from the voided document (View, download and delete files in transactions), then attach it to the draft (Attach a file to a transaction).
6. Restore the number on the draft, and add a note to both documents. Xero's own reply suggests a history note so other users know what happened.

Narrower cases have their own guides: bills only (bulk unapprove bills), bills still awaiting approval (moving bills back to draft), paid documents (voiding paid invoices) and keeping the number (reusing an invoice number).

Where the native way runs out

• It is one document at a time. Xero's invoice article says awaiting payment invoices can't be voided in bulk. Bills can be voided several at a time from the Awaiting Payment tab, but the copy, re-attach and renumber steps stay manual, and Xero's help pages describe no bulk version of them.
• A void is permanent. Xero says voided invoices can't be reinstated or restored. For bills it adds that voiding could have tax implications, so check with your accountant or bookkeeper.
• Paid and part-paid documents need payments removed first. Xero says you can remove only one payment from one bill at a time, and that a payment deleted with Remove & Redo can't be restored; if it was removed in error you have to recreate it. The bank statement line stays, so you reconcile it again.
• Credit notes and prepayments add steps. Allocations are removed one by one before the document can be voided.
• Lock dates block it. After a lock date is set, users can't add or edit transactions dated on or before it (Set up or remove lock dates). An administrator can remove a lock date temporarily; that is a decision about your books.
• The link between old and new is yours to keep. The voided original and the new draft are two unrelated documents unless you write the notes yourself.

The faster way: Unapprove

Unapprove is a web app that works with Xero. It runs the routine above for a whole selection of documents, in the order that protects the original: the draft copy is created first, and the original is only voided once the copy exists.

What it does

• You sign in at Xero and choose the organisation. Filter approved invoices and bills by date, contact, number or reference.
• A preview shows what will happen to each document and why some will be skipped. The preview writes nothing.
• You confirm by typing the count, for example UNAPPROVE 37. A CSV backup of the selection is offered on the preview, before anything runs.
• For each document it creates the draft copy, carries the attachments across and voids the original. A sales invoice's original is first renamed with a "-V" suffix, so the copy can take the original number.
• Each document gets a history note naming the other, with the old number and the order things happened in.
• Interrupted runs resume from the exact step they stopped at. If the daily API limit is nearly reached, the job pauses and carries on the next day (details).

What it skips, and tells you why: documents with a payment applied or a credit note allocated (why), documents inside a locked period (why), and documents for an archived contact (why). A document with an attachment over 10 MB, or more than 10 attachments, can only be voided, because no complete copy can be made; the preview says so. For US organisations Unapprove only voids; it does not make copies.

What access it asks for: your name and email to sign you in, read and write on invoices and bills, read and write on attachments, and read-only on organisation settings and contacts. A separate payments permission is requested only if you choose the "Remove payments and void" run. A read-only bank transactions permission is requested only if you include bank transactions in an attachment export.

What it never does: it never sees your Xero password, never stores your attachments (they are streamed from the original to the copy), never changes anything before you type the confirmation, and never removes a reconciled or batch payment. It cannot undo a void, and neither can you or Xero.

Price: free for 14 days, with unlimited previews and three documents processed in total. After that, $29 per month per connected organisation, or a one-off $49 Clean-up Pass covering 7 days and up to 500 documents. Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT and sales tax (added at checkout); the pricing page has the details.

The same paid plans also include the attachment ZIP export. If you only need to cancel documents, use the void-only run with a preview instead of creating draft copies.

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