Void a purchase invoice
Voiding an issued purchase invoice (shown in the app as a Supplier Invoice) cancels it by posting an equal and opposite entry to your general ledger, so its effect on your accounts is fully reversed while a permanent record of both the original and the reversal is kept. You void a finalised bill rather than deleting it.
Before you begin
- The bill must be Issued. A Draft is deleted, not voided (use Delete Draft).
- Nothing must have been paid against the bill. If you have recorded and allocated a supplier payment to it, voiding is blocked until that payment is reversed and unallocated.
- Voiding requires a reason.
Steps
- Go to Purchases → Purchase Invoices and open the issued bill.
- Select Void.
- Enter a Reason for voiding (this is required and is kept in the record).
- Select Void Invoice to confirm.
[Screenshot required: Supplier invoice details page with the Void confirmation window and reason field]
What happens next
- Sales Scribe posts a reversing entry that cancels the original bill's effect on your ledger — it reverses the expense/asset, the input VAT and the accounts payable it created.
- The reversal carries the bill's own date, not today's. Voiding says the bill should never have existed, so the period it was in ends up as though it never did — the expense and the amount owed both disappear from that month, and the bill drops out of the VAT period it was in. Dating the reversal today would instead leave the expense in the old month with a contra in this one, and your VAT return and your ledger would disagree.
- The bill's status becomes Voided.
- The document is kept permanently for audit; it is not deleted.
Important notes
- Voiding is the correct way to cancel a finalised bill — you cannot simply delete an issued purchase invoice.
- Voiding cannot be undone. If you void a bill in error, record it again as a new purchase invoice.
- If you only need to reduce what you owe (for example the supplier sent a partial credit), a purchase credit note is usually the better tool.
Troubleshooting
- The Void button isn't shown, or voiding is refused. A bill can only be voided while it is Issued and has no payment against it. You will see "Purchase invoice cannot be voided in status … or has payments." First reverse the supplier payment allocated to it, then void the bill.
- The Void button is greyed out and mentions a lock date. Because the reversal carries the bill's own date, voiding a bill inside a locked period would be a posting into that period, and it is refused. See Why can't I post into this date?.
- The bill is still a Draft. Drafts are not voided — use Delete Draft instead.