Reversed, negated, removed: three kinds of undo in one press — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This presentation is for whoever at GadgetSphere has to explain why a voided document is still on a report. In about twelve minutes you will be able to name the mechanism behind any such figure, decide whether it is correct, and say which month it belongs to.

Step 1 — Learn the three shapes, because the screen never names them

After this step you will have the vocabulary the rest of this depends on. A void does three different things to three different subsystems. Some are reversed: a second, opposite entry is written and the original stays. Some are negated: an opposite movement is added to a ledger and both rows remain. And some are removed: the row is simply taken away. Nothing on any screen tells you which category a given figure falls into, and it decides everything about what you see afterwards. A reversal nets to zero on a balance and shows twice on a movement listing. A removal shows nowhere at all.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — The three shapes of undo, and why reports disagree about them

Step 2 — Reversed: the journal, and the date that surprises everybody

After this step you will stop being caught out at month-end. Voiding a posted document writes a mirror journal with every debit and credit swapped, carrying the branch, profit centre, project, segment and account of the original line across unchanged. The part that catches people is the date. The reversal takes the original document’s transaction date, not today’s — only the posting timestamp is now. So voiding a January invoice in March moves January, not March, and a period you already reported on changes underneath you. Check the transaction date of what you are voiding before you press it, every single time.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Shape 1 — reversed: a second, opposite entry, and the original stays

Step 3 — Reversed: two limits on the journal reversal worth knowing

After this step you will know where a reversal quietly does less than you assumed. Only one journal is reversed. A document that produced more than one journal header — and a foreign-currency document with its own gain or loss posting is the obvious case — does not have the others reversed by this path. And a foreign-currency document’s journal is not reversed at all: the void journal step refuses outright on a forex document. Neither of those is announced anywhere on the screen. If your group buys in another currency, treat a void on those documents as a conversation with your accountant rather than a button.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — What a void will not do

Step 4 — Negated: stock, and costing replayed forward

After this step you will stop treating a doubled stock listing as a fault. The stock ledger is append-only. A void does not delete the movement it is undoing; it writes a negated copy of every line, stamped with a transaction code of void, and then queues a recalculation that starts at the movement immediately before the one being undone and replays costing forward over everything after it. So the quantity balance is right, both rows correctly appear on a movement report, and every later line’s moving average is recomputed — which is exactly why a margin you looked at yesterday can be different today.

Reference: Related Applets - Stock Balance — How a FINAL reaches the balance

Step 5 — Removed: the cash book, the contras and the aging snapshots

After this step you will know which three things genuinely disappear. The cash book lines are not reversed, they are soft-deleted — and the matched amount goes back onto the bank statement line, so a statement line you had already reconciled returns to your unmatched list. The contras are deleted outright and both documents in each one have their balances recomputed, which is why an invoice you thought was settled goes back to outstanding. And every historical aging snapshot for the document is deleted, with no date bound, so the document leaves last month’s aging report and every earlier one too.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Shape 3 — removed: the row is taken away, not reversed

Step 6 — Loyalty points, and the adjustment you did not key

After this step you will recognise a points line nobody typed. Voiding a sale deletes the point lots and contra rows the document’s lines created. But the member may already have spent those points, and then the balance cannot simply give them back. Where the shortfall is large enough the platform writes its own adjustment line, describing itself as an automatic adjustment made because the balance was insufficient after a void. It is not an error and it is not someone editing a member’s account by hand. Expect to see it when you void a sale from a loyalty member whose points have already been redeemed.

Reference: Point Currencies and Balances — Line, lot, balance

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Learn the three shapes, because the screen never names them"]
  s2["Step 2 — Reversed: the journal, and the date that surprises everybody"]
  s3["Step 3 — Reversed: two limits on the journal reversal worth knowing"]
  s4["Step 4 — Negated: stock, and costing replayed forward"]
  s5["Step 5 — Removed: the cash book, the contras and the aging snapshots"]
  s6["Step 6 — Loyalty points, and the adjustment you did not key"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: Can your tenant unpost what it posts? · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation