Duplicate invoices help needed

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Wed Feb 5 11:48:38 EST 2014


Brenda,

Brenda Reed <brendareed123 at gmail.com> writes:

> Derek, yes I did try to unpost it and the record could not be found, yet I'm
> fairly certain it was originally posted. I also tried to delete the
> transaction and a msg popped up saying that it was  read-only and generated
> from an invoice and to try unposting it. And again, since it can't be searched
> on and located I can't unpost it. That's why I tried voiding it which has
> worked for now.  And to your point about the ? in the Type field, if the trans
> was not created by the business invoice post procedure how is it possible to
> create this type of trans that cannot be searched on nor deleted nor edited.
> Also, the way it is right now I cannot post it as the Post button is not there
> when I click on the trans. What is the purpose of the "Void" function for
> invoices?

I think you are being confused between an Invoice and a Transaction
within GnuCash.  Let's make sure we have common terminology.  When I say
"Invoice" I specifically mean the UI and data you get from the Business
-> Customer menu items (Find Invoice, New Invoice, etc).  From there you
can create an invoice and then post it to A/R.

When you post the invoice it creates a *Transaction*.  This transaction
is what you see in the A/R account register, and it read-only (because
it's supposed to be a mirror of the data in the Invoice, so GnuCash
tries to make sure they cannot get out of sync).  It has some internal
links back to the Invoice (and the Invoice has a link to the
transaction), but they are two distinct objects in the system.  This
transaction will be marked with an "I" in your A/R account.  The only
way to delete this transaction is to unpost the associated Invoice.

When you say "Duplicate Invoice", there really are two ways to
"Duplicate".  There's the "Duplicate" function you get from
e.g. Business -> Customer -> Find Invoice -- that's truly a "Duplicate
Invoice" function, and results in an *UNPOSTED* invoice.  You would be
able to search on this but it wouldn't appear in A/R until you posted
it.  And when you posted it, it would appear with an "I".

Then there is the "Duplicate Transaction" function, which is something
you do from the Register.  This is what you get from the toolbar ("make
a copy of the current transaction"), or the right-click ("Duplicate
Transaction") context menu, or even the the Transaction -> Duplicate
Transaction menu item.  All of these, when done in an A/R account, will
duplicate the *TRANSACTION* that was created when you posted the
Invoice, including the read-only setting..  But it will NOT duplicate
the Invoice, which means there is nothing searchable in the Find Invoice
interface that you can unpost to delete it.  This would also result in
the '?' flag being set because that metadata doesn't get set when you
duplicate the transaction.

My guess is that you duplicated the *transaction*, not the *invoice*.
This is why there's nothing to search on or unpost, and why it's marked
with a '?'.

Voiding the transaction in A/R is like voiding any other transaction.
It's probably the only workaround you have in the interim, short of
removing the transaction from your data file manually.  However we never
recommend doing that (but make a backup first if you want to try).

> Brenda

-derek

> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>    
>     Brenda Reed <brendareed123 at gmail.com> writes:
>    
>     > Not able to just delete the Type of ? since the transaction would need
>     to be
>     > unposted 1st, and the search does not turn up the transaction. It sounds
>     like
>     > you are right that the read only transaction in the A/R register may
>     have been
>     > duplicated (for the record I did not use the "Duplicate" function). I
>     was able
>     > to create this issue 2 times and have only been using GnuCash for 2
>     weeks. Can
>     > I go into the XML file and find the records and remove them? If so, what
>     > should I search on, invoice # maybe? Yes, I will file a bug report. Sad
>     to be
>     > in no man's land where a problem cannot be fixed. Wonder if this happens
>     much?
>    
>     Did you *try* to unpost it?  No transactions created by the business
>     features should ever have a "?" in that column.  An Invoice will have an
>     "I" and a Payment will have a "P".  If you see a "?" then that means the
>     transaction was NOT created by the business invoice "post" procedure.
>    
>     This is why you cannot find it via "search" -- there *IS* no invoice
>     behind the transaction.  It's a rogue, probably created by a "duplicate
>     transaction" mistake.  I question: How did you create this transaction?
>    
>     So... Did you *TRY* to delete the transaction?  What happened with you
>     tried?
>    
>     > Brenda
>    
>     -derek
>    
>     --
>            Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>            Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>            URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>            warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available



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