How do I check invoices and bills in Xero?

Last reviewed: September 28, 2026 · Markdown version

If your business uses Xero, open Sales overview (for invoices) or Purchases overview (for bills) and click Search. If a supplier billed you through Xero and you do not use it yourself, the "Outstanding bills" link on the online invoice they sent shows everything you still owe them. Both routes below are from Xero Central, Xero's own help site.

Searching everything at once

Xero's steps: "In the Sales or Purchases menu, select Sales overview or Purchases overview", then "Click Search to show the search panel", enter what you know, and click Search again. What you can see depends on your role — Xero says you "can search for all transactions or only those you've created" (Search for sales and purchase transactions — Xero Central, read 28 September 2026).

What to type in the search box

The search matches four things: "number, reference, contact name or amount" — and a fragment is enough: "Xero displays any transactions that contain anything you've entered." A few rules from the same article save a lot of fruitless searching:

"Enter an amount without currency symbols."
For credit notes, "enter a minus sign before the amount".
If a customer or supplier has been renamed or merged, their older transactions are "shown with the original name" — so search the old name too.
Voided and deleted invoices are hidden unless you tick "Include Deleted & Voided" when searching from the Invoices screen.

Dates narrow it further. Start Date and End Date can be used alone or with text, and when you fill in both, Xero "shows transactions that match both fields". The Date type setting decides which date counts — "Any date" by default, or the issue, due, expiry or paid date (Search for sales and purchase transactions — Xero Central, read 28 September 2026).

Checking the bills you have to pay

For supplier bills, Xero's route is: "In the Purchases menu, select Bills", choose the status tab to search in, and use the search bar. "You can also click Filter to include transactions with a particular status, such as overdue bills." Results can be sorted by clicking a column heading, and shown "10 to 200 items" per page (Search for sales and purchase transactions — Xero Central, read 28 September 2026).

If a supplier sent you a Xero invoice

You do not need your own Xero subscription to see what you owe. Xero says "A link to the outstanding bills appears on online invoices, credit notes or prepayments you receive". From the online invoice, click Outstanding bills, then log in — or create a free login if you do not have one. There is a condition: it works "as long as you're listed as the contact on the online invoice". From that screen you can download a statement and any files the supplier attached (View your outstanding bills online — Xero Central, read 28 September 2026).

What Xero's search does not cover

The search article describes matching on numbers, references, contacts, amounts and dates. It is silent on searching the text of files attached to a transaction, so we would not count on finding a bill by a phrase that only appears inside its PDF (the Search for sales and purchase transactions article, read 28 September 2026). If you have the invoice number but not the invoice, where the number usually sits on an invoice helps you read it off the right document.

Where DocFind fits

Only for the copies that have left Xero. If your supplier invoices end up as PDFs on your phone — downloaded from emails, or from the statement screen above — DocFind searches inside all of them at once, and each result shows the file, the page and the text around the match — so a number printed on a bill leads you to the bill. Scanned bills are read on the device first. It does not connect to Xero, cannot see anything in your Xero account, and reads PDFs only.