Posting & Voiding a PO
A Purchase Order's Draft → Posted → Void life looks like an invoice's, but it moves different levers: no ledger entries, real budget consequences. This article pins down exactly what each transition does — and doesn't do.
Access you'll need. Posting, reopening, and voiding these requires the Accounts Payable v2 permission set (AP clerks & managers) or Accounting Admin v2 (system administrators). The Accounting Controller v2, Accounts Receivable v2, and Read Only v2 sets can review any order but not change its status.
Posting: issuing the commitment
Posting a draft order (the Post button — its tooltip says it plainly: lock this Purchase Order and commit budget amounts) does four things:
- Locks the document. Lines can no longer be added, edited or removed — the order is now a promise the vendor may act on. ("Cannot modify lines on a non-Draft Purchase Order.")
- Assigns its number from the entity's document sequence, and its accounting period from the PO date.
- Runs the budget check. If the order's lines match a posted budget, the amounts are committed against it and the Budget Check field reports the verdict — Within Budget, or a block if the order would overspend (overridable only via Bypass Budget Controls). See PO Budget Analysis.
- Enables the downstream flows — receiving, invoicing, and the vendor-facing PDF.
The approval gate applies here too: posting requires Approval Status Approved or Not Required; Submit for Approval starts your organization's sign-off.
Reopening a posted order
Reopen to Draft to fix or renegotiate. The lock lifts, and any budget commitment reverses while you edit. Two cautions:
- If deliveries or invoices already happened against the order, changes must stay consistent with them — you can't reduce a line below what's been received or billed.
- Re-posting re-runs the budget check at current budget levels — an order that fit in March may not fit in September.
The amendment is recorded for you
You don't have to keep a side note of what the order used to say. The first time a purchase order is posted, REDA Financials freezes the original commitment on the record itself, and every later amendment is measured against it.
| Field | Where | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Original Amount | Purchase Order Line | The line's value when the order was first posted. Locked in at that moment and never changes, however often the line is edited afterwards. A line added later gets its Original Amount stamped when the amended order is re-posted. |
| Change Order | Purchase Order Line | Ticked automatically when a re-post finds a line whose amount now differs from its Original Amount — or a line that wasn't on the order when it was first posted. Lines that still match what was originally issued stay unticked. |
| Original PO Amount | Purchase Order | The order's total as first posted. |
| Change Order Amount | Purchase Order | Today's total minus the original total. Positive means the order grew; negative means it shrank. Blank until the order has been posted once. |
None of this is manual, and none of it is a separate document to chase: reopen, amend, re-post, and the order carries its own history of how far it has moved from the deal you first issued. That is what an auditor asks for, and what a budget conversation needs when a commitment quietly grows.
Voiding: cancelling the commitment
Voiding a posted order (void reason required, as everywhere) releases what posting reserved:
- The budget commitment returns to available — the money can be promised elsewhere.
- Receiving and invoicing close — nothing further can happen against a voided order.
- The document stays, frozen with its reason: your record that the order existed and why it died.
Cancelling the rest of a partly-delivered order
Vendor delivered half and the deal's off? Don't void — the delivered half is history that should stand. Instead, reopen the order and reduce quantities to what was actually received and billed, then re-post. The order closes out honestly: commitment trimmed, balances at zero, audit trail intact.
The three states at a glance
| Draft | Posted | Void | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lines editable? | Fully | No — "Cannot modify lines on a non-Draft Purchase Order." | Never again |
| Budget | Nothing committed | Amounts committed against the matched budget | Commitment returned to available |
| Receiving / invoicing | Not yet possible | Open — deliveries and matched bills flow | Closed — nothing further can happen |
| General ledger | Untouched | Still untouched — entries come from matched invoices | Untouched |
| Deletable? | Yes | No — reopen or void instead | No — frozen with its reason |
Common mistakes to avoid
| Mistake | Why it hurts | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Voiding a partly-delivered order | The void tries to erase a commitment that was partly honored — the delivered half deserves to stand | Reopen, trim quantities to what was received and billed, re-post |
| Reopening an order and leaving it in Draft | The budget commitment stays reversed and the vendor's paperwork points at a document that is no longer issued | Make the change and re-post in the same sitting |
| Expecting the void to fix the ledger | There is nothing to fix — a PO never wrote entries; the real costs live on its matched invoices | Deal with posted invoices on their own terms (reopen, void, or vendor memo) |
| Amending a posted order by "just telling the vendor" | The system still enforces the old quantities and prices — every future bill mismatches | Reopen, amend, re-approve if required, re-post; the PDF regenerates from the truth |
| Leaving dead orders posted | Their commitments sit on the budget forever, starving real spending | Void what will never be fulfilled — the reason field is there to say why |
Where to go next
- Understanding Purchase Orders — the full lifecycle.
- PO Budget Analysis — what commitment means in numbers.
- Cloning a Purchase Order — reissuing after a void.
Frequently asked questions
The order would overspend its matching budget line. Your options, in order of preference: trim the order; get the budget amended (a Budget Entry supplement); or — with the right authority — tick Bypass Budget Controls and post anyway, visibly.
Drafts, yes. Posted orders, no — they may have been sent to a vendor and committed budget; the void-with-reason path preserves that history.
No — assets created from received lines are real records with their own lifecycle. If the goods are going back to the vendor, dispose of the assets through the asset workflow (see Asset Disposal) as part of unwinding the deal.
As far as reality allows: nothing already received or billed can be contradicted, so a line can't drop below its received or invoiced quantity. Everything else — prices, new lines, dates — is open, and the budget check runs fresh when you re-post.
Where approvals apply, yes — the amended order posts only with Approval Status Approved or Not Required, and a changed commitment is exactly what sign-off exists to see. Submit for Approval restarts the process.
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