HubSpot Ideas

BEastom8

Delete or void Invoices (don't make mistakes permanent)

This is a huge issue and there seems to be no reason for it.  It is impossible to Delete or Void an invoice after a certain point.  If an invoice is accidentally marked paid it's locked.  You can't delete it, void it or unassociate it, so it is just permanently **bleep** up.  This is unacceptable.  Nothing should ever be impossible to undo.  I have clients now that show multiple paid invoices because one was marked paid with the wrong amount.  So a new one was created with the correct amount and now they show double paid.  To not be able to correct this is absolutely laughable.

HubSpot Updates
January 02, 2024 08:38 AM

@BEastom8 I hear you, and I think your point about not making mistakes permanent is a good one. In the case you described above, we would allow you to create a manual payment object for the check, then delete it when the check bounces, then create a new record for the bank transfer once it was processed. The mistake would be able to be corrected. This is not possible today, but it will be very soon. We actually have a beta launching this week for manual payment creation/deletion if you would like to try it out.

 

Can I ask you what value it serves to VOID a paid invoice? What information does that communicate, and under what circumstances would you VOID a paid invoice? 

Idea Submitted
January 02, 2024 08:14 AM

Hey folks! Product manager for the HubSpot Invoices team here. I've got two updates here for you that might be interesting:

 

1. We're currently working on enabling you to edit finalized (i.e. OPEN) invoices, so hopefully that reduces some of the pain associated with making an invoice, then having to VOID it in order to make changes. We'll make a big announcement when that feature is available, though I expect it will land sometime in Q1'24. You will also have a setting to prevent anyone from editing invoices, if you would prefer.

 

2. I wouldn't expect editing PAID or VOID invoices to be a feature any time soon, however we will eventually build a way for you to remove payments from an invoice, which would enable it to be edited, then the payment could be reapplied (or not). Manually created payments will also be deletable. This behavior matches what we see in other billing/accounting systems, and we feel that invoices should not be created until a customer has agreed to pay.

 

I hope that's interesting to y'all. Let me know if you have feedback. Keep an eye on the "Product Updates" tab (click your profile --> Product Updates) for announcements about Invoices. We'll announce the features there. 

38 Replies
BEastom8
Member | Platinum Partner

Lol, I didn't swear, but it looks like I did.  Sometimes censorship makes things look worse than they are.

RW152
Member

Yeah, not being able to delete these invoices is nuts. Doesn't make any sense. Certainly makes testing the platform difficult.

lfontana
HubSpot Employee

Upvoting this. 

JMelius7
Member

I agree, this is a major issue for us. It's interesting to me why this is not a current funtionality as I am sure several orginazations need this feature. 

CHohn
Participant

This is alsoa big problem for us. I understand the need to keep around invoices assocaited to payments that came through HS payments due to compliance reason. 

In an ideal world I'd love to be able to "Unassocaite" the payment that came through HS payments and then delete or update the invoice, then re-associate it to a new one.. 

But, that's not ourissue here. If you have a manually created invoice that was manually marked as paid you should be able to delete it.

I'd love some feedback from the Commerce Hub team about this current shortcoming to know how high of a priority this is.

ethankopit
HubSpot Product Team

Hey folks! Product manager for the HubSpot Invoices team here. I've got two updates here for you that might be interesting:

 

1. We're currently working on enabling you to edit finalized (i.e. OPEN) invoices, so hopefully that reduces some of the pain associated with making an invoice, then having to VOID it in order to make changes. We'll make a big announcement when that feature is available, though I expect it will land sometime in Q1'24. You will also have a setting to prevent anyone from editing invoices, if you would prefer.

 

2. I wouldn't expect editing PAID or VOID invoices to be a feature any time soon, however we will eventually build a way for you to remove payments from an invoice, which would enable it to be edited, then the payment could be reapplied (or not). Manually created payments will also be deletable. This behavior matches what we see in other billing/accounting systems, and we feel that invoices should not be created until a customer has agreed to pay.

 

I hope that's interesting to y'all. Let me know if you have feedback. Keep an eye on the "Product Updates" tab (click your profile --> Product Updates) for announcements about Invoices. We'll announce the features there. 

BEastom8
Member | Platinum Partner
QBO can void a paid invoice. This SHOULD be possible. Hubspot should have
no restrictions on invoicing anyway. The information should be
accurate, and if not it should be able to be corrected. There is no reason
to place a restriction on purpose. Just remove them. As my original
statement says, don't make mistakes permanent. If there is a possibility
of a mistake, then there should always be a possibility of correcting a
mistake. If a customer makes a payment, but then a check bounces, it
enters a bank account, then is removed, so it is legitimately paid, then
unpaid. Hubspot has no way to fix this.
CHohn
Participant

Hey @ethankopit,

It's great to hear that there are some plans to make creating and editing invoices easier before they're fully paid. 

Here's an example of how QBO allows you to edit fully paid invoices to add line items, etc. 

https://video.roofingbusinesspartner.com/watch/nTqZcXcYgrXVGc9ST1ByL2?

For our use case there are 2 major priorities. 

  1. Deleting of manually created payments (thus allowing the deletion or editing of invoices that have incorrect values)
  2. Editing of invoices as outlined in QBO, (scope increases such as change orders) so the customer has one running tally of the whole scope of work we are to provide with them. 

Thanks fore the update! I'll look out for updates and feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions related to the QBO stuff I shared. 

ethankopit
HubSpot Product Team

@BEastom8 I hear you, and I think your point about not making mistakes permanent is a good one. In the case you described above, we would allow you to create a manual payment object for the check, then delete it when the check bounces, then create a new record for the bank transfer once it was processed. The mistake would be able to be corrected. This is not possible today, but it will be very soon. We actually have a beta launching this week for manual payment creation/deletion if you would like to try it out.

 

Can I ask you what value it serves to VOID a paid invoice? What information does that communicate, and under what circumstances would you VOID a paid invoice? 

SLalonde
Participant

@ethankopit It should be possible to delete an invoice is for no other reason than to allow users to test invoice features and delete test invoices to avoid needing to filter them later in reports. Since there's no sandbox feature in HubSpot, the only way to remove invalid data is to delete it. Most everything else can be deleted, so Invoices should be deletable also, even if there's an extra "are you sure? blah blah blah" warning that comes with it. In fact, some deleting features in Hubspot require that we enter an extra value to confirm the action, so the same would apply here. It could be an admin-only feature, to avoid all users deleting invoices willy-nilly.

Kna23
Member

Absolute MUST to edit an invoice or delete. ALSO - Why can't I create my own invoice numbers??? 

 

Here's a REAL LIFE SCENARIO. I sell a product to small stores. I go in, I give them a PAPER INVOICE (they will NEVER give me an email address and they will NEVER pay electronically), they pay me cash or check. I need to record that in HubSpot, but can't. Why? Because my invoice book numbers might be 1000-2000 and another salesperson's might be 3000-4000, but HS insists on a single sequence. 

 

Also, why does recording a payment REQUIRE an email address?? Makes no sense.

MikeyMc
Member

We've been sending invoices to our biggest corporate customers for years with Quickbooks, and thought it would be great to be able to see everything in Hubspot. I spent a few hours today setting up invoices and creating my first itemized (many items) invoice.  Then I saw the big scary message "Once this invoice is finalized, you won't be able to change it back to a draft, edit or delete it. This can't be undone." and I had to abandon this new invoicing initiative. 

It doesn't happen all the time, but since our invoices have many items it's possible to make mistakes. We are also billing franchise and dealer networks on behalf of their partners and sometimes they make mistakes. It's really unimagineable that any business would be able to use an invoicing system that doesn't allow for editing or deleting BEFORE it's paid.

I'll be happy to start using Hubspot for invoicing once this is fixed, but for now it's a non-starter.

CHohn
Participant
Hey Mikey!

I did hear from the Commerce Hub team that they are starting to enable
"edit invoices" functionality soon! Shoot me a DM and I'll forward you the
PM from Commerce Hub who's working on this feature they're looking for beta
testers if you're interested!

Best,
tinal1
HubSpot Employee

Hi everyone! I'm the product manager for Invoices at HubSpot. We did start beta testing "edit invoices" functionality recently, so you can make changes to your open and unpaid invoices without needing to void and recreate. If you are interested in early access, please message me and I can get you started ASAP! 

 

Thanks,

Tina 

BEastom8
Member | Platinum Partner
Tina, this also needs to be available for PAID invoices. Someone could
have accidentally marked an invoice paid, or accidentally created and
marked paid an invoice for the incorrect amount, or for the wrong person.
Accidents happen, and there is NO reason to not have any way to correct
them.
CHohn
Participant

@BEastom8 you will be able to "unassociate" a HS Payment from an invoice in the future from my understanding. Correct @tinal1?

I'm not sure if this is live yet but I know it's been talked about!

The idea then is, unassocaiate the payment then edit / void / delete the invoice, then do what you would want to with the payments. 

I think a future state is manually creating payments too? I could be wrong there but it would make sense for invoices "Marked as Paid" manually for those payments to be able to be modified unlike card / ach payments. 

tinal1
HubSpot Employee

Hi @BEastom8 @CHohn , 

Manually creating payments and recording them against invoices is live! 

Editing paid invoices would likely require more constraints, in terms of which fields can be edited and how to handle the existing payment, than unpaid invoices do. Unassociating payments in the future has definitely been talked about as well. 

LawtonBrown
Member

I agree that sometimes you need to be able to delete an invoice that's open. I created an invoice while testing and now, I'm stuck.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hey there! As the owners of our account, we should be able to use it as we see fit. This includes having the freedom to delete, open, pay, or void invoices like on any platform, as mistakes do happen. We can do this on any platform, including Quickbooks, PayPal, and Stripe. Thanks!

 

Example: I've been having some trouble with Hubspot's invoicing process. It seems that once an invoice is in draft mode and gets tested with payment credentials, it becomes marked as paid or open, and we can't delete it. This seems like a bit of an inconvenience. I was wondering why Hubspot gives us the option to enter invoice numbers if we can't delete them later when testing payment methods. It would be great if there were a way to edit/delete or unmark as paid to put it back to edit mode.

I use Fiverr Workspace and can edit, unmark paid, issue payment receipt again, do what I want, delete, change payment type, etc this is common in any invoices app. 

Thanks for your help! #nobrainerHello there! 

Shawn_AMBOSS
Participant

Upvoting. Truly disappointing to have done a bunch of testing only to find out at the end tat the deletion is not possible for certain invoices. Such a fail HS.