Undo to Draft is not a rewind — 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 been told they can pull a finalised document back and fix it. In about eleven minutes you will know precisely what that button undoes, what it leaves standing, and when using it would quietly put your ledger and your document out of step.

Step 1 — Know how small the undo actually is

After this step you will know what the button really does. Taking a finalised document back to Draft publishes to exactly one subscriber: the knock-off open queue. What it undoes is the linkage. The source order gets its outstanding quantity back, the document stops holding it, and the links between them are released. That is the whole of the fan-out. Void has ten subscribers and Finalise has thirty-two; this one has one. The word Undo is doing a great deal of work in that button label, and it is worth knowing before rather than after.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Undo to Draft releases links. It does not unpost anything

Step 2 — Know what stays posted

After this step you will know what is still true about a document that says Draft. Every posting the document made is left exactly where it was. The journal is still posted, the stock movement is still on the ledger, the cash book line is still there, the tax is still recorded, the points are still awarded. Only the word at the top of the screen changes, and the per-subsystem posting statuses still read posted underneath it. So a document sitting in Draft after an undo is not an unposted document. It is a posted document wearing a draft label.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Undo to Draft releases links. It does not unpost anything

Step 3 — Understand why re-finalising will not post it again

After this step you will avoid the one mistake this whole presentation exists to prevent. Each subsystem refuses a second posting on its own terms. The journal step refuses outright, and its refusal goes into a background error table rather than onto your screen. The cash book behaves the same way. The stock step is quieter still: it posts only when the document’s inventory status is blank, and after an undo that status reads posted, so the step runs, writes nothing, raises nothing and reports success. Nothing anywhere tells you that the second finalise posted less than the first one.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Undo to Draft releases links. It does not unpost anything

Step 4 — Know what happens if you edit in between

After this step you will have the rule in one sentence. Pull a finalised invoice back to Draft, change a quantity or a price, finalise it again, and the document says one thing while your ledger says another — with no message, no failed badge on the screen, and a Posting tab still reading posted, which is true and is about the old figures. If the document has posted anything at all, do not undo it. Void it and key a new one. That is slower by a minute and it is the difference between a correction and a discrepancy nobody finds until the audit.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Four different ways to unwind a document, and only one of them is a void

Step 5 — Know what the button was actually built for

After this step you will read the design rather than the label. Undo to Draft was built for documents that post nothing at all: quotations, sales orders, purchase orders, requisitions, shopping carts, marketplace orders pulled back to re-sync. For those, releasing the links is the entire consequence, so one subscriber is exactly the right number and the operation is genuinely reversible. That is why the button is hidden by default everywhere it exists and appears only where an administrator has switched on the setting or granted the permission, and only in a small minority of applets. All but one of those handle documents that post nothing at all; the exception is the goods-receipt screen, and there the rule from the last step applies.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Undo to Draft releases links. It does not unpost anything

Step 6 — Know how Discard differs, and the route with no fan-out at all

After this step you will have the last two operations straight. Discard releases contras, knock-offs and the serial, batch and bin locks the document was holding, and reverses nothing, because a draft has posted nothing to reverse. It is refused outright on anything already final or voided, which is why the button appears to do nothing on a finalised document. A discarded document keeps its number. And there is one further route, available only to an integration key and to no screen: an endpoint that clears the posting status with no refusal checks and queues no processor at all. Ask before anyone wires it into a workflow.

Reference: What a Void Undoes — Discard is for something that should never have existed

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Know how small the undo actually is"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know what stays posted"]
  s3["Step 3 — Understand why re-finalising will not post it again"]
  s4["Step 4 — Know what happens if you edit in between"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know what the button was actually built for"]
  s6["Step 6 — Know how Discard differs, and the route with no fan-out at all"]
  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.

Back to the series · Play this as a presentation