Wrong contact on an approved invoice or bill: a guide for Xero users

An approved invoice or bill is under the wrong contact. Xero will often let you change the contact in place, so start there. This guide covers what can and can't be edited after approval and after a payment, what to do when Edit is blocked, and how to deal with a whole batch.

Checked against Xero Central on 23 October 2026.

Changing the contact on one document

• Sales invoices. Xero's page on editing an invoice says an awaiting payment invoice can be edited in any field. For a paid or part-paid invoice it lists the fields you can change without removing the payment, and the contact (the To field) is one of them.
• Bills. Xero's page on editing bills says an awaiting payment bill with no part-payments or credit notes applied can be edited in any field. For a paid bill it says fields that don't affect the total, including contact details, can be edited. It doesn't spell out whether that covers swapping the supplier, so try one bill and read its history first.
• Your customer isn't told. If the PDF has gone out, send the corrected one. Xero records each edit, with the user and the time, in the document's history (View history and add notes).

When Edit is missing or blocked

• The date is locked. Users can't add or edit transactions dated on or before a lock date, and an administrator can remove the date temporarily (Set up or remove lock dates). Ask whoever set it first.
• Your user role. Xero's sales access table shows the draft sales and purchases and viewer roles can't edit invoices created by others.
• A paid invoice on the mobile app. Xero says the iOS and Android apps can't edit one directly. Use the web, where the paid-invoice steps apply, or delete the payment first.
• The wrong customer already has it. Xero's page on deleting or voiding an invoice says to issue a credit note for an invoice you have sent, so you and your customer keep an audit trail, and a void can't be restored. The usual route is a credit note on the wrong contact and a new invoice for the right one; the void or credit note guide compares them.
• It is a duplicate contact. If the wrong contact is a second record for the same customer, Xero's page on merging contacts says invoices and bills take the name of the contact you keep, and no transactions are deleted.

The manual route, step by step

1. Find the document. Use search with the number, reference or amount (Use search in Xero).
2. Check the date. If it is on or before the lock date, stop and ask the administrator.
3. Check for payments. A paid invoice allows the contact change. For a paid bill, try it, and if Edit won't take it, remove the payment first.
4. Open Edit. For an invoice: Sales > Invoices, open it, click the menu icon, select Edit. For a bill: Purchases > Bills, open it, then Edit.
5. Change the contact and save. Pick the right contact in the To field and click Update for an invoice or Save for a bill.
6. Check the result. Read the history entry, and send the corrected invoice if the old one went out.

Many documents under the wrong contact

Xero's find and recode tool can change the contact on many transactions at once. It needs the administrator role, and the contact has to be recoded on the source transaction, not through a manual journal. Xero suggests no more than 200 lines at a time. It can't search for archived contacts, locked periods are view-only when a lock date covers all users, allocated credit notes are recoded separately, and a recode can't be undone, only recoded again or edited (About find and recode). Without it, Xero says approved invoices can only be edited or voided one at a time (Approve and send an invoice).

Where Unapprove fits

Unapprove is a web app that works with Xero. It does not change a contact. It copies each selected document to a draft for the same contact, and you change the contact on the drafts, which Xero lets you edit in any field. It earns its place when the documents should be voided and issued again as fresh drafts. For a few unpaid documents, or a contact-only change you can recode, editing in place is simpler.

• Select. Filter approved sales invoices and bills by the wrong contact, date range, number or reference. The preview writes nothing.
• Draft copy. Each draft has the same number, dates, lines, tax and tracking, and its attachments. A sales invoice's original is renamed with a -V suffix and voided; a bill keeps its number on the copy. Both get a history note.
• You change the contact, then approve. Open each draft, pick the right contact and approve; Xero approves several invoices at once from the list.
• Typed confirmation, for example UNAPPROVE 37. The preview offers a CSV backup of the selection to download first.

What it skips, and tells you why: documents with a payment applied (why) or a credit note allocated, documents in a locked period (why), and documents for an archived contact (why): restore the contact in Xero first. A document with an attachment over 10 MB, or with more than 10 attachments, can only be voided: it gets no draft copy, and the preview says so. For US organisations it only voids and makes no copies. A void is permanent.

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.

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 for 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.

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