Purchase invoices
Delete a purchase invoice
Deleting a purchase invoice takes its goods back out of stock, reverses its entries, restores the supplier's balance and rebuilds the item costs. It is refused once the goods have moved.
2 min readLast updated
In this article
Delete a purchase invoice when it should never have been entered, for example a duplicate or an invoice for the wrong supplier. The deletion is a full reversal of everything the invoice did.
Before you start
You need the permission to delete purchase invoices. It is separate from viewing, creating and editing.
The invoice's goods are still in the warehouse.
No return to the supplier and no payment is recorded against the invoice.
Steps
Open Purchasing › Purchase Invoices › Purchasing Invoice and choose a date range to load the list.
In the invoice's Actions menu, select Delete. You can also select Delete at the top of the invoice document.
Read the confirmation: Delete purchase invoice #{id}? This reverses its stock and accounting entries and cannot be undone.
Select Confirm. Purchase invoice deleted appears.
What the system reverses
In one step, which either completes fully or changes nothing:
the received stock leaves each warehouse: on-hand stock for normal lines, reserved stock for consignment lines;
every entry the invoice posted is reversed, so the books net to zero for this invoice;
each affected item's average cost is rebuilt from its purchase history without this invoice;
the supplier's balance is restored. For a cash invoice, the automatic payment is reversed as well.
When deletion is refused
A not-enough-quantity message naming an item: the goods were sold or transferred, so they cannot be taken out of stock again.
This invoice has supplier returns and cannot be edited or deleted.
This invoice has payments allocated and cannot be edited or deleted.
The fiscal year for this transaction date is closed.
Purchase invoice is already deleted.: it was deleted or replaced by an edit earlier.
Delete or return?
If the purchase was real but some goods went back to the supplier, do not delete the invoice. Record a return to the supplier, so both the purchase and the return stay on record.
Common questions
Why did an item's cost change after I deleted an old invoice? The average cost is rebuilt as if the invoice had never existed, so it now reflects only the remaining purchases.