Drafts and submitting

It appears after submitting an invoice it can not be edited, this is fairly annoying as in some cases it needs to be edited such as adding on late payment charges or other simple things that does not require a credit notw

After now having to delete all my transactions three times because I have needed to simply delete only one invoice I have decided to not submit them until payment is made. However, the problem with this is that the status is “draft” so I can no longer filter for overdue invoices. There must be a way around this where I can have the status as unpaid or overdue while still being able to edit an invoice.

If not, please make invoices fully editable after submission as other accounting software do

Hello,

On the submission of Sales Invoices, posting is done in the accounting ledger. If we allowed editing even in the submitted transaction, it will have to redo accounts posting. Sometimes, it could also lead to authentication issue.

For now, editing in the submitted Sales Invoice is not allowed. Would it be possible for you to manage late payment charges in the Payment Entry?

To suggest development of this feature in the ERPNext, please create Github Issue.

Unfortunately not, they need to be added on to the invoice. Something to do with how the legal system works in the UK.

Would it not be possible to edit everything except items that are already on? That way it won’t affect the accounting ledger as it is only other details and items being added

I think this issue (and similar) has been discussed a few times:

Reading through the various posts it seems like the main issue is amending a document changes the number, so links become an issue, and referencing a job to a client becomes an issue.

What if ERPNext worked like this for amending a document:

  • there is a dedicated field for document versions, that increments, as well as the naming series
  • When you cancel and amend a document, ERPNExt increments that field AND adds that number to the OLD DOCUMENT.
  • the new amended document retains the original naming series number and links should point to it automatically.

Example:
An original document is created, SO-1234. The document automatically also has a new “version” field with the value 1 (hidden if preferred, but it should be on print formats).
Other documents are created that reference SO-1234.
The document is then cancelled and amended. The old document is changed to SO-1234-1. The new document is SO-1234, and in the version field, 2. Links continue to reference SO-1234.

I’m sure there are some issues with this approach, but getting a conversation going is always good.

3 Likes

Thanks for this fantastic idea. I do think that it would be best to “retain” the serialized name, with an updated “version” field within the new document, and the “old” documents adding the dash # -1, -2, -3, -4, etc. In the same order. For every change in the document, the appended number to the old ones is incremented. This is genius, since each old document increments to the next number available. You can theoretically have n amendments and corrections, but in practice you have your average correction amounts (in our case, I have seen numbers as high as 4 or 5, caused by yours truly.)

The expected behavior is to always keep the link between all the documents in the process. I am attaching a diagram I made in-house to clarify the procedures for most of the business cycle (Buying, Selling) as ERPNext handles them.

Something like this:

Complete Business Cycle

Linked Documents

Purchase Cycle (Buying)

Linked Documents with Change in Quotation only

I have to focus on business issues today, could you check if issue exists on GitHub, if not, create the feature request?

2 Likes

I’ll make a Github issue later today.

I have read the story so far with fascination! What has happened since? Please someone link to the issue on github if you can so myself and others can follow the story through. :smile: Thanks!

Fwiw, I think I found Dbone’s profile on GitHub and followed his activity list back in time, but didn’t see anything relevant to this discussion in Dec 2016. Or maybe I didn’t know what I was looking for. What should I be looking for? Cheers.

2 Likes

Thanks for bringing up this old thread. I never actually made a Github issue for this. It got lost in all the other implementation tasks I had at the time.

Here it is now: Workflow change: Amending a document increments the number of the old document, new one retains original number · Issue #11318 · frappe/erpnext · GitHub

Hopefully it will spark some conversation.

2 Likes

Have you found any solutions to your issue yet? I have somehow managed to remove -1, -2 increments by customizing the Invoice template. Just change the code on the Invoice heading from {{ doc.name }} to {{ doc.amended_from or doc.name }} and see if it helps.

1 Like

Welcome to ERPNext and thanks for your contrbution Anandakrishnan,

This forum software flags your use of the above ‘markup’ as suspicious spam, so please refrain from using this style of markup.

I suggest perhaps use the > Blockquote doublequote to avoid this problem.

Thanks for this