Deleting old transactions and invoices

[Geert Janssens]

On Thursday 07 January 2016 20:21:01 Axel Essbaum wrote:
> On Jan 7, 2016, at 19:55, Geert Janssens <geert at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 05 January 2016 11:59:24 Axel Essbaum wrote:
> > > (one more try ;-)
> > > 
> > > I am running GC 2.4.11 under OSX 10.8.  I have been using GC to
> > > track
> > > the transactions for my businesses since 2009.
> > > 
> > > How can I best remove all income and invoices from two clients for
> > > the past 6 years?
> > > 
> > > If I search my transaction descriptions for the clients I find a
> > > series of invoices and payments.  Can I simply delete all of these
> > > and then go adjust my Close Books transactions each year to
> > > correctly
> > > zero the corresponding income accounts?
> > > 
> > > Or does something happen under the covers with invoicing or books
> > > closing that will be screwed up if I do this?
> > > 
> > > Thanks!
> > > 
> > > - Axel
> > > 
> > > --
> > > Axel Essbaum
> > > axel at essbaum.com
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Unfortunately you can't delete invoices. It's not implemented.
> > 
> > Also you won't be able to simply delete the transactions associated
> > with them either. GnuCash prevents any direct changes to the
> > transactions directly related to invoices.
> > 
> > Cleaning up history was not considered when the invoice feature was
> > added.
> > 
> > Sorry about that.
> > 
> > As a clumsy alternative you could unpost all invoice you no longer
> > need (after deleting all payments associated to them).
> To be clear:
> 
> 1) delete all payments to the invoices I plan to unpost
> 2) unpost invoices
> 3) manually correct books closing transactions
> 
> Should that work?  Accounts should balance after that?
> 
Yes. Unposted invoices don't exist as far as gnucash is concerned, so they don't have any 
effect on the books.

As of manually correcting book closing transactions, it may be more a matter of correction 
your opening balances (which is similar).

Regards,

Geert