Document Lifecycle and Cancellation

Last updated: June 20, 2026

Every document moves through the same lifecycle, and the system enforces a careful rule about what can be deleted, what must be cancelled, and how a chain of documents unwinds. It is what keeps your records consistent and your history intact.

What you will learn
  • The shared draft-to-cancel lifecycle
  • Why some documents are deleted and others only cancelled
  • How the dependency guard protects a document chain

The lifecycle

A document runs through Draft (a work in progress), an optional Verify step (a reviewer approves or rejects it), Confirmed (it is live and has posted its effects), and finally Cancelled. Almost every document in the system shares this same shape, so once you know it you know them all.

Delete versus cancel

The two ways a document ends are deliberately different:

  • Delete – a document that never got past confirmation (still a draft or in verification) can be cleanly deleted. It posted nothing, so it can simply vanish.
  • Cancel – a confirmed document is never deleted; it is cancelled, which reverses its postings and leaves an audit trail. The document stays on record, marked cancelled, so history is never erased.

The dependency guard (cascaded cancellation)

This is the careful part, and it is what makes the chain trustworthy. A document that has downstream documents generated from it, an order that became a delivery and an invoice, cannot be cancelled while those dependents are still live. The system blocks the cancellation and tells you exactly which documents depend on it.

To unwind, you work from the bottom up: cancel or reverse the downstream documents first; once they are cleared, the parent can be cancelled (not deleted). So a chain always unravels cleanly, and you can never strand an orphaned child or leave the books half-reversed.

Worked example

You try to cancel a confirmed sales order, but it already has a delivery and an invoice against it. The system stops you and lists them. You raise a credit note to reverse the invoice and a return for the delivery; with the downstream cleared, the order will now cancel.

Good practice

  • Unwind from the bottom. Clear the downstream documents before the parent.
  • Delete only true drafts. Anything confirmed is cancelled, never deleted, so history survives.
  • Expect the guard. A blocked cancellation is the system protecting your chain, not an error.

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