[GNC] Delete / Edit invoice doesn't?

[Simon Roberts]

Hah, well, I did:

Business->Customer->FindInvoice.
Double click the invoice in the list, close the finder window.
Select the invoice "row"
Click "Delete" in the toolbar, brings up "Are you sure you want to delete
the selected entry"
Click yes.

But having just tried this with more than one item in the invoice (that was
an inspiration--it literally never happens in my business!) I now see
what I actually achieved--it just deleted the single line item, not the
invoice.

So, next question, and this might not have an answer other than opinion, in
which case that's fine, sometimes the answer is "the software design makes
that kinda hard and it's not a priority"; but is there a rationale behind
not being able to delete an invoice? Humans make mistakes, and being able
to undo them would seem to be... helpful?

And on poking around, it seems like one cannot delete a Customer either
(even if there are no transactions associated with it). Again, it seems
somewhat suboptimal in the face of the inevitable human propensity to err.

The "Edit..." right next to Customer:
[image: image.png]
... yeah, I see now that you point it out, it brings up a window marked "*Edit
Customer*"--meaning edit the customer itself. It doesn't equate to "edit
which customer this invoice is applied to", that's represented by "Select"
in a whole other window that comes from the "Edit Invoice" button on the
top line.

I would never have cottoned-on to the significance of that wording, nor
worked out how to do this, if you hadn't pointed it out, many thanks.

OK, well, if there's a rationale that might help me, great, but I think I
get what's going on here now.

Again, many thanks for rescuing me yet again everyone, and thank you for
all of your input Derek.

Cheers,
Simon


On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 10:55 AM Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Tue, January 3, 2023 12:33 pm, Simon Roberts wrote:
> > Back again, and very grateful for your ongoing tolerance and help!
> >
> > We just created an erroneous invoice, specifically it was assigned to the
> > wrong customer. Now we're finding two problems and I'm not sure if it's
> > user error, or something else.
> >
> > 1) If we try to edit the invoice, and use the pop-up dialog to change the
> > customer, it creates a *new* customer. This actually creates a duplicate,
> > as we've given it the customer number and the name. We can see two
> > customers side by side (well one on top of the other :) when we go for a
> > customer list.
>
> First, you need to ensure the Invoice is not posted.
> Second, you need to click "Edit Invoice" to get the popup.
> From there, you should be able to [SELECT] the Customer.  (If it says
> [EDIT] and not [Select] then you've probably not unposted the invoice
> properly).
>
> It should not create a new Customer.
>
>
> > 2) If we try to delete the invoice, it seems to half-succeed. The entry
> > goes blank in the pane it was showing on, but if we do Customers->Find
> > Invoice, it still finds it, and that Find window shows its details. If we
> > click on it, it brings up the blank entry in the main tab that lists
> > invoices.
>
> There is no way to "delete" an invoice.  How are you attempting to do this?
>
> The two things you can do if you make an erroneous invoice is:
>
> 1) You make mark it inactive.  This will hide if from the searches, or
> 2) You can re-use it by selecting a new customer.
>
> >
> > We've patched round this by re-opening the saved gnucash file that
> > preceded
> > this mistake, but how should we do this, that obviously isn't what's
> > intended.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Simon
>
> -derek
>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Simon Roberts
> > (303) 249 3613
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnucash-user mailing list
> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org
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> > -----
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> >
>
>
> --
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
>
>

-- 
Simon Roberts
(303) 249 3613
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