[GNC] delete invoice or bill

[Adrien Monteleone]

> On Oct 22, 2019 w43d295, at 2:44 PM, Mark Hedges <mark.hedges at weirdvibe.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 2:23 AM Adrien Monteleone
> <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>>> On Jun 20, 2019, at 10:16 AM, Contact at Starfire Energy <contact at StarfireEnergy.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Is there a way to delete an invoice created in error or a bill created in error?
>> 
>> Sorry, they can’t be deleted.
> 
> Why?

I don’t know. I didn’t write the code. Maybe Derek (who did) can chime in. Generally though in accounting, you don’t delete *anything*, you instead make correcting entries. Pencils are forbidden in accounting classes because you could erase instead of getting in the habit of making correcting entries. Official paper books in pencil would likely be extremely suspicious in an audit.

At least with GnuCash you have the option to unpost a bill/invoice and re-use/re-assign and edit it later. 

> 
>> The recommended procedure is to change the bill/invoice number to something like “use next”. You can additionally create a placeholder customer and vendor to assign them to if you like.
>> 
>> Then just try to remember at some point to search for any bills/invoices numbered “use next” and edit them to reflect a real new bill/invoice.
> 
> Instead of letting people correct bad data?
> 
> Mark

You can correct bad data, using the procedure I described. If you unpost an invoice, it will not appear in your reports or in your AR/AP registers. So technically, there is no ‘bad data’ in your books any more to correct. Your data file contains a reference to an unposted invoice though. (which is editable)

The idea of changing the invoice number to something like ‘use next’ is so that when starting a new invoice/bill, if you get in the habit of searching for that number first, you can then ‘clean out’ those unposted/unused invoices/bills. Unfortunately, there is no other way to keep track of them to remind you that you need to use them.

Regards,
Adrien