Documents

A quote, an order, an invoice, a payment, and a journal entry are Documents: records the business and others rely on as final. One rule covers all of them: a draft changes freely; a finalized Document is numbered and never changes.

How a Document moves

An invoice moves like every Document:

1. You draft it. A draft changes freely, has no number, and can be deleted. It shows its title, its type in place of a number, and the status Draft.
2. You finalize it with its own Action, Issue invoice. In one step, it gets the next number, such as INV-US-12, becomes final, and posts to the general ledger.
3. It never changes again. Nobody edits or deletes it. Only its own Actions move it, such as Void invoice.

Each Document has its own Action that finalizes it, named as accountants and sales teams name it:

Document	Finalized by	Number	Posts to the ledger
Quote	Send quote	Q-12	No
Order	Confirm order	SO-7	No
Invoice	Issue invoice	INV-US-12	Yes
Payment	Receive payment	PAY-US-3	Yes
Journal entry	Post journal entry	JE-40	Yes

A quote or an order binds the business to a customer, but moves no money, so it posts nothing.

How numbers are assigned

A Document gets its number in the same step that finalizes it. If finalizing fails, no number is used. So each series runs in order with no gaps.

Invoices and payments are numbered per legal entity: INV-US-12 is the twelfth invoice of the entity coded US. Each entity's series stays complete on its own, as tax authorities expect.

Correct a final Document

To change a final Document, you correct it with a new step, never an edit. The original stays as it was, so what the customer saw and what was posted stay on record.

To fix	Do this
A sent quote	Draft a new quote with the new terms
A confirmed order	Cancel order; it stays on record, canceled
An issued invoice	Void invoice; it reverses what the invoice posted
A received payment	Void payment; the invoices it paid fall due again
A posted journal entry	Reverse journal entry; it posts the opposite entries

A reversal posts entries equal and opposite to the original ones, so the books net to zero and both stay in the history. A voided invoice keeps its number, so the series still has no gaps.

Lines, and Documents drafted from others

A Document has lines, such as the items on an order. An order drafted from an accepted quote copies the quote's lines, and an invoice drafted from a confirmed order copies the order's lines.

Records that aren't Documents

Deals, tasks, projects, to-dos, companies, and people are Objects: they have no draft and are never finalized. You change them whenever the facts change, and their Activity keeps every earlier value. Those with numbers, such as DEAL-7, get one when they are created, and a deleted one leaves a gap in its series, which doesn't matter for work.

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