Void, Reverse & Undo

Void, Reverse, Removed, Undone and Undo all name the same operation in Athenty — of an invoice, of a write-off, of a credit memo, of any record the books carry. Whichever of those words a screen uses, it means one thing:

It nullifies the record as though it had never been issued, and posts a reversing entry so the ledger agrees.

Different screens use whichever word reads most naturally for what you are looking at. None of them means something different from the others. If you can undo it, you get all of it back; if you cannot, Athenty refuses and says why — it never quietly undoes part of it.

Today the one record you can undo yourself is an invoice. Undoing a write-off or a credit memo will follow the same rule, but it is not built yet.

Undo is not a write-off

These two are easy to confuse, and they are not interchangeable.

	Undo (Void / Reverse)	Write Off
What it says	”This should never have existed."	"This is owed, and we will not collect it.”
Revenue	reversed in full, and the tax posted with it is reversed too	stays recognised, then relieved as bad debt
Use it when	the record was raised in error	the client genuinely owes and will not pay
Billed work	returns to WIP so you can re-bill it	stays billed

Undo is the right tool for a mistake caught early. Once money has moved, or once the books for that period have been closed, a write-off dated today is the correct instrument instead — and that is what Athenty will tell you to do.

The vocabulary in full

Five operations reduce or change a bill. Only the last one is an undo.

Operation	Acts on	What it does
Write Down	part of the unpaid balance	reduces the bill without clearing it
Write Off	the whole unpaid balance	clears it to zero as bad debt
Credit Memo	the already-paid portion	credits the payor, refundable. Once the payor has been refunded it cannot be undone — the money has left
Adjust	any line	re-allocates, defers, or increases — not necessarily a reduction
Void / Reverse / Removed / Undone / Undo	the whole record	nullifies it and reverses the ledger entry

A write-down or write-off touches what is unpaid. A credit memo touches what was already paid. They never overlap, so neither one uses up the other’s room.

When Athenty will undo an invoice

Two conditions, and both must hold.

1. The accounting period must be open — two dates matter

The period the invoice’s own issue date falls in must be open. This is the firm’s rule about which invoices may be undone at all: once you have closed and reconciled the month a bill was raised in, that bill is settled history.
The current period must also be open, because the reversing entry is dated today (see Where the reversal posts). If today falls in a closed period the reversal has nowhere to go, so Athenty refuses rather than marking the invoice void and leaving its revenue on the books.

Reopen the period if you need to undo, or write the invoice off as of today instead.

2. The invoice must be untouched

No payment, no write-down, no write-off, no credit memo. An invoice that has already been reduced cannot be undone on top of that reduction — doing so would reverse the same revenue twice and push the receivable below zero.

When it refuses, and what to do instead

Every refusal names the fact that blocked it. These are statements about the invoice’s state rather than about your role, so the remedy is to change that state — though some of those remedies, such as reopening a closed accounting period, are themselves restricted actions.

What you’ll be told	Why	What to do
The invoice is already void	it has been undone once	nothing to do — check the invoice list filter
It has payments recorded	money has been received against it	write off the remaining balance, or issue a credit memo for the amount already paid
It has already been reduced (the message names the write-off, the credit memo, or both)	undoing now would reverse that revenue a second time	write off the remaining balance as of today (undoing the adjustment itself is not built yet)
A paid invoice	a void asserts the bill never existed, and this one is settled	write it off, or credit-memo the paid portion
The period is closed (the message names the date)	either the invoice’s own period or the current one is closed	reopen that period, or write the invoice off in an open period
The invoice changed while you were voiding it	someone else acted on it at the same moment	reload the invoice and look at its current state before retrying

Athenty refuses in each of these cases. It does not undo “the part that is left”, and it does not silently convert your undo into a write-off — writing the invoice off as of the current date is a deliberate action you take yourself.

Where the reversal posts

Athenty’s general ledger is append-only: a posted entry is never edited or deleted, and corrections are made by posting a reversing entry. So when you undo an invoice:

The original entry stays exactly as it was, marked reversed and linked to the entry that reversed it. Its period is not rewritten.
The reversing entry is dated today and posts in today’s period.
The invoice’s billed time, fees and recoverable costs return to WIP, so you can re-bill the matter correctly.

So undoing a January invoice in March posts a March entry. January’s books are untouched — which is also why the current period has to be open for the undo to succeed.

The rule about the invoice’s own period (condition 1 above) is a separate idea: it decides which invoices you are allowed to undo, not where the correction lands.

The warning you’ll see even when everything is allowed

An open period means the entry can be posted. It does not mean nothing downstream was built on the figures as they stood. So an undo that reaches back into an earlier period carries this warning:

This posts as of today, in the current period — the original entry is never changed. Any reconciliation, remittance or filing already prepared from the period that original entry belongs to may no longer agree, so review those before you continue.

It is a prompt to check, not a refusal. Athenty cannot see what you have already reconciled, remitted or filed — you can.

Why a remittance may already have gone out. Athenty posts sales tax to the ledger when an invoice is issued, not when it is paid. Under the Excise Tax Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. E-15, GST/HST generally becomes payable on the earlier of the day consideration is paid and the day it becomes due (s. 168), and consideration becomes due no later than the day the invoice is issued or the date of the invoice (s. 152). Net tax is then calculated and remitted per reporting period (s. 228). Full text on CanLII. So the tax on a January invoice may already have been remitted before you undo it in March.

Québec’s QST is a separate regime under the Act respecting the Québec sales tax, CQLR c T-0.1 (official text), administered by Revenu Québec, and its reporting periods and deadlines differ. Confirm the treatment and timing for your own filings.

This is attorney-review-pending — confirm it with your own advisor before relying on it for a filing. Athenty warns you that a filing may be affected; it does not determine whether one was.

What is not available yet

Stated plainly so you do not go looking for it:

Undoing a write-off or a credit memo is not built. The rule on this page is the rule those operations will follow, and the invoice undo already reads the amounts they set — but there is no button for them today. To correct a write-off or a credit memo now, speak to whoever owns your firm’s books.
Athenty does not convert a refused undo into a write-off for you. It refuses and tells you to write the invoice off as of the current date; you do that yourself.
Athenty has no record of what you have filed. A closed accounting period is what it checks. That is a reasonable stand-in for “already remitted”, but it is not the same fact — the warning above exists because of that gap.

Invoices — building, issuing and collecting a bill, including write-offs, credit memos and bad-debt recoveries.
A/R Reports — aged receivables and per-client balances.