What you can and cannot change after posting
A common question is: "I've issued this — can I still change it?" The short answer is that drafts can be changed freely, but once a document is finalised you correct it by reversing or crediting, not by editing. This guide gives you the exact rules for each document type.
The general principle
- Draft documents are fully editable and can be deleted. They have no effect on your accounts.
- Finalised documents — Issued (invoices, credit notes), Posted (purchase invoices, payments), or Sent (quotes, estimates, proforma) — become part of your records and cannot be edited. You reverse or adjust them instead.
This protects the integrity of your accounts and your audit trail: a figure that has affected your reports, your VAT, or a customer's balance cannot silently change afterwards.
Sales invoices
| You want to… | Allowed? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Edit a draft | Yes | Open and change it. |
| Delete a draft | Yes | Delete it (it has no accounting effect). |
| Edit an issued invoice | No | Raise a credit note, or void and re-issue. |
| Change the currency | Only before lines are added | Once a draft has lines, remove them or start a new invoice. |
| Void an issued invoice | Yes, with conditions | Not allowed if it has payments (remove/void them first) or an applied credit note (unapply it first — see the note below). |
| Write off an issued invoice | Yes | Only if it has an outstanding balance — see Bad debts and write-offs. |
| Delete an issued invoice | No | Void it instead. |
Sales credit notes
| Action | Rule |
|---|---|
| Edit / delete | Only while Draft. |
| Void | Only when Issued and not applied to any invoice. |
| Currency | Fixed once issued; must match the related invoice. |
Note on applied credit notes: a credit note that has been applied to an invoice must be unapplied before either the credit note or that invoice can be voided. Open the credit note, use Unapply in its Credit Applications list to remove the application, then void.
Quotes, estimates and proforma invoices
| Action | Rule |
|---|---|
| Edit / delete | Only while Draft. |
| After Sent | Immutable — create a revision instead (a new version with a new number; the old one becomes Superseded). |
| Convert to invoice | Once only; the source then becomes Converted. |
Purchase invoices
| Action | Rule |
|---|---|
| Edit / delete | Only while Draft. |
| Void | Only when Posted and nothing has been paid against it. Remove supplier payments first. |
Purchase orders, goods received notes, delivery notes
| Document | Rules |
|---|---|
| Purchase order | Edit only while Draft. Void only while Draft or Sent, and not once any goods have been received or it has been invoiced. |
| Goods received note | Edit only while Draft. Can be voided (which reverses the received quantities on the purchase order). |
| Delivery note | Edit only while Draft. There is no void for delivery notes. |
Payments (customer and supplier)
| Action | Rule |
|---|---|
| Edit / delete | Only while Draft (before it is posted). |
| A posted payment | Cannot be edited, deleted or voided — reverse or refund it instead, which posts a reversing entry. |
| Remove an allocation | You can unallocate a posted payment from an invoice without reversing the whole payment. |
Customer purchase orders
Edit only while Draft (before you activate it). After that you can Close or Cancel it, but not edit it.
Why not just allow edits?
Because an issued invoice has already increased your receivables, recorded revenue, and charged VAT — and may already appear on a customer's statement or in a submitted VAT figure. Editing it would change history. Reversing (void) or adjusting (credit note) keeps a complete, honest record of what happened and when.
Two different rules: per document, and per period
Everything above is per document — an issued invoice cannot be edited, whatever its date. That rule is about the document's own state.
There is a second, independent rule: the posting lock. Once the books are locked up to a date, nothing dated on or before it can be posted, edited or voided — whatever kind of document it is, and whatever state that document is in.
You can meet either rule on its own, or both at once:
| Document is a draft | Document is issued | |
|---|---|---|
| Date is open | Edit freely | Void or credit it |
| Date is locked | Refused by the lock | Refused by both |
The lock judges the date on the entry, not the date you typed it. It also covers changing an existing entry inside a locked period, and moving an entry's date into or out of one.
Setting a financial year end does not lock anything by itself — the two are separate settings, so that a year can be finalised and still adjusted, or a VAT quarter protected long before its year end.
Someone with the post into a locked period permission can post anyway, and it is recorded when they do. See Why can't I post into this date?
If someone else changed it first
If you and a colleague open the same record and both save, the second save is refused with "This record was changed by someone else. Please refresh and try again." Refresh to see their change, then re-apply yours. This prevents one person's edit from silently overwriting another's.