Voiding a quote or invoice

Sometimes a document should not exist. The event moved and got rebuilt, the quote went to the wrong client, the invoice was raised twice. Deleting it is not the answer once a number has been issued, because a gap in your numbering is a question your accountant will eventually ask. Voiding is the answer: the document stays, its number stays, and it reads as cancelled.

This article covers what voiding does, the one rule that stops you doing it, what your client sees afterwards, and how it interacts with Xero.

Voiding a document

An invoice: open it and expand Status, client link & details. The Status row offers Draft, Sent, Paid and Void, with the current one missing from the list. Mark Void cancels the document.

A quote: open it and choose Void quote. It is offered on a sent or declined quote. An accepted quote has already made a booking, so unaccept it first.

A confirmation: open it and choose Void confirmation. It is offered on a sent, signed or declined confirmation with no payment recorded. Voiding one is how you withdraw an agreement for a booking that fell through, or clear a declined one so a program can raise a fresh confirmation.

Voiding is reversible. Mark an invoice back to Draft or Sent, or choose Restore as a draft on a quote or confirmation, and it returns along with the client link it had before. A restored quote or confirmation is a draft, so send it again when it is ready.

If the document is still a draft and you genuinely want it gone, there is a Delete draft button lower down the page instead. A draft has no issued number to preserve, so deleting one leaves nothing behind. Once a document has been sent, void it rather than delete it.

The one rule: no money against it

1pm refuses to void a document that has money recorded against it. This matches Xero, and for the same reason.

Voiding asserts that a document should never have existed. That stops being true the moment money is allocated to it. If a client has paid, the reversal belongs in removing the payment or issuing a refund, not in erasing the record of what they paid against.

The Mark Void button is shown disabled rather than hidden, with the reason on it, so the rule is discoverable instead of looking like a bug. There are two shapes it takes, and the fix is different for each:

Payments are recorded against it. Remove those payments first if the document really should be voided. Voiding refunds nothing, so removing a receipt here is a bookkeeping correction, not a refund.
It is marked Paid with no receipts behind it. Mark it Sent first, then void it.

The rule is enforced when the status is written, not just in the page, so a payment landing at the same moment cannot slip past it.

One deliberate exception: money that arrives after a void is still recorded. A client checkout completing seconds after you cancelled the document is money that genuinely moved and has to be banked. That is different from voiding something that was already part-paid, which is the case being blocked.

Voiding and your reports

A void is not revenue, so the Revenue and Invoices reports leave it out of their Invoiced, Total billed, Paid, Outstanding and Tax figures. Tick Void on either report's criteria form and voided invoices are listed so you can look at them, each marked "not counted" beside its status.

If money did land on one through the exception above, the report says so in a line under the table and points you at the Payments report, which counts every receipt whatever happened to the document it was paid against.

What your client sees

Voiding withdraws the document. Every public route refuses it: the invoice link, the quote link, the confirmation page, and the PDF download. A client holding the link gets nothing rather than a cancelled invoice they might still pay.

The link itself is not destroyed. 1pm decides from the document's status at the moment the client opens it, rather than throwing the address away, so un-voiding a document you cancelled by mistake brings the same link back to life. Anyone who already has it in their inbox can use it again.

Worth knowing: this is the state at the time they open it. A PDF you already emailed is a file in their inbox and cannot be recalled, so a void that matters commercially still deserves an email saying so.

Email to client is turned off on a void invoice, because the link it would send refuses the client and the PDF is stamped Void. To bill the client again, raise a new invoice.

Voiding and Xero

Voiding does not sync. Only Sent and Paid push to Xero, so a document that already reached your accounts stays there after you void it in 1pm.

If the invoice was pushed, void it in Xero too. Otherwise your accounts keep an invoice that 1pm considers cancelled, and the two disagree at the worst possible moment, which is usually a BAS or a year end.

Voiding a staged invoice

If you are billing a deposit and a balance as separate invoices and decide to bill the whole thing in one instead, 1pm will not quietly double-bill you. It refuses and names the staged invoice that already exists, so the sequence is: void (or delete) that one, then raise the full invoice.

Voided documents are ignored when 1pm works out what has already been billed, so once it is cancelled the event bills cleanly.

Credit notes

1pm does not raise credit notes yet. If a client has paid and the amount needs to come back down, the current answer is to adjust the payment records and raise a corrected document, or handle the credit in your accounting package.

Quotes and invoices covers the document statuses and how one becomes the other.
Getting paid covers recording and removing payments.
Invoicing a deposit, progress payments and balance covers the staged pair.
Sending invoices to Xero covers what syncs and when.