Re: Thoughts on Voiding Invoices

["Chris Travers" <..hidden..>]

As I said, this may be largely about corner cases.

On 9/21/06, Joshua D. Drake <..hidden..> wrote:

> Well usually at that point, you wouldn't void then invoice because the
> books are closed on the year. You would apply a credit.
Fair enough.  Though there may be exceptions (invalid invoices or ones
mistakenly issued, for example might still need to be voided, which
means adjusting the previous accounts).  And this may be done *prior*
to actually closing the books but after the end of the period (i.e.
the books might actually be closed some time after the accounting
period rolls over, after the accountant has a chance to post
adjustments, etc).

We may well be obsessing about this too much-- it is normal for
accountants to have to post adjustments to the books in preparation
for taxes, SEC reports, etc.  At least this way the numbers are
internally consistant and you aren't going to get strange artifacts,
like negative inventory accounts...  Also this only affects the
expense side and not the revenue side.

My own preference would be to back-date the COGS adjustment to the day
the invoice was originally posted.  We can also add a VOID flag to the
reversal transaction so that one can have reports of voided invoices
so as to post relevant adjustments as needed.

At some point, we probably also want database-level controls on
closing of books, so that one is not allowed to post *any*
transactions to dates prior to the date when the books were closed.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers