Voiding & Refunding Receipts
Money records are different from invoices. An invoice recorded twice can simply be voided — but a receipt says cash moved through a bank account, and your bank statement doesn't have an eraser. So REDA Financials gives you two correction tools that respect the bank: unpost (rewind a receipt that never should have existed) and void by reversal (cancel it with an equal-and-opposite record, the way a bank would). Refunds — giving money back to a customer — are a third, separate thing, covered at the end.
Access you'll need. Unposting and voiding Cash Receipts requires the Accounts Receivable v2 permission set (AR clerks & managers) or Accounting Admin v2 (system administrators). The Accounting Controller v2, Accounts Payable v2, and Read Only v2 sets can view receipts but not unpost or void them.
Unpost: the quiet rewind
A posted receipt that hasn't been bank-reconciled can go back to Draft: change its status, and REDA Financials removes its applications (restoring the invoices' balances) and its accounting entries. Fix what was wrong — amount, date, customer — and post again. Nothing extra remains on file, which is exactly right for a typo caught the same day.
Void: cancel by reversal
Once a receipt has lived long enough to matter — it's been reported on, the period has moved on, or the money genuinely arrived and bounced — the correct tool is Void. Instead of deleting anything, REDA Financials creates a reversal receipt: a mirror image with a negative amount, the same accounts and dimensions, born already posted.
- The original receipt stays on file, marked voided and locked, with its accounting intact.
- The reversal backs the cash out — and mirrors any applications with negative ones, so invoice balances come back automatically.
- The pair is linked: the reversal appears on the original's Reversals tab.
You'll be asked for a void date (it can't be earlier than the receipt date) and a reason. Two records, both matching reality: money came in, money went back out. That's what your bank statement will show, and it's what an auditor wants to find.
One detail that surprises people: a receipt's Status never says "Void." Receipts are only ever Draft or Posted — voiding marks the posted record as voided and locks it, while the status stays Posted. That's deliberate: the money did post, and the books keep saying so; the reversal is what cancels it. On the record you'll see the void reason and date, the lock, and the reversal listed under the Reversals tab.
A worked void — the bounced $9,000
Suppose Corvus Consulting's $9,000 ACH payment (receipt MCR001024, applied in full to their June invoice) came back from the bank two weeks later. Voiding it produces one new document — a reversal receipt for −$9,000, described "Reversal of MCR001024" — whose entries undo both halves of the original:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| The reversal backs the cash out (mirror of the original posting) | ||
| Customer Deposits and Prepayments Received | $9,000.00 | |
| Cash and Cash Equivalents | $9,000.00 | |
| The mirrored negative application reopens the invoice | ||
| Accounts Receivable — Trade | $9,000.00 | |
| Customer Deposits and Prepayments Received | $9,000.00 | |
Net effect: cash is back out of the books, Corvus's June invoice shows its $9,000 balance due again and resumes aging, and the original receipt's entries are untouched — preserved for the bank-reconciliation audit trail, offset rather than erased. The reversal itself is born posted, fully locked, and linked to the original via its Original Cash Receipt field.
| Unpost (→ Draft) | Void (reversal) | |
|---|---|---|
| What remains on file | An editable draft | The original (locked) + a negative reversal |
| Accounting entries | Removed | Original kept; reversal offsets it |
| Applications | Deleted; invoices reopen | Mirrored negative; invoices reopen |
| Best for | Same-day mistakes, wrong details | Bounced payments, anything already reported |
| Blocked when | The receipt is bank-reconciled, or the dates fall in closed books | |
The rules that keep voids clean
Each guard below is the exact message you may meet, with the remedy beside it:
| The message | What it means / what to do |
|---|---|
| "Void Date is required when voiding a Cash Receipt." | The reversal needs a books date — usually the day the money bounced or the error was found. |
| "Void Date cannot be before Receipt Date." | Money can't be returned before it arrived — pick a date on or after the receipt date. |
| "Please provide a reason for voiding this receipt." | The reason lives on the record forever — say what actually happened ("ACH returned by bank 16-Jul"). |
| "This Cash Receipt cannot be unposted or voided because it is reconciled. Remove the reconciliation first." | Bank-matched receipts are protected — deliberately unmatch in the reconciliation first. |
| "Voided Cash Receipts cannot be modified." | A voided receipt is a closed chapter — corrections happen on new documents. |
| "Reversal Cash Receipts are system-generated and cannot be modified." | The mirror record is untouchable by design — it must stay a perfect mirror. |
| "Cannot void a reversal Cash Receipt." | You can't void the void — if the void itself was wrong, use Undo Void on the original. |
| "Applications on a voided Cash Receipt cannot be modified or deleted." | The negative applications belong to the void story; they are locked with it. |
| "Cannot undo void — reversal receipt date {0} falls on or before the AR book closure date ({1})." | The reversal is already in closed books; reopening the void would rewrite a closed period — talk to your controller. |
| "Posted or voided Cash Receipts cannot be deleted. Void the receipt instead." | Nothing recorded ever disappears — drafts delete, posted money reverses. |
Voiding a foreign-currency receipt
When the receipt you're voiding was in a foreign currency, one detail matters enormously: the exchange rate the reversal uses. A void is a correction — it says "this receipt should never have happened" — so it must undo the original exactly. If the reversal were valued at today's rate instead of the original receipt's rate, the two entries wouldn't cancel in your home currency, and the difference would surface as a phantom foreign-exchange gain or loss that never actually occurred.
REDA reverses a foreign-currency receipt at the original receipt's exchange rate, so the void nets the original to zero in your entity's functional currency — no spurious FX movement on the day you void. A refund, by contrast, is a real settlement at the refund date and is handled differently (see Refunds are not voids below).
Common mistakes to avoid
| Mistake | Why it hurts | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Voiding a same-day typo | Two permanent records (original + reversal) for a mistake nobody else ever saw | Unpost to Draft, fix, repost — clean and traceless, exactly what unpost is for |
| Unposting a receipt from a closed or reported period | Its accounting vanishes from figures you already published | Void — the original stays, the reversal lands in the open period |
| Voiding to return money the customer is owed | A void claims the receipt was wrong; the customer's money was real | Issue a credit memo and refund — the outgoing payment gets its own document |
| Setting the void date to the original receipt date "to keep it tidy" | The month's cash reports silently change; the bounce happened later in reality | Date the void when the bank returned the money — the two bank statement lines will match two documents |
| Deleting and re-keying instead of correcting | Only drafts can be deleted anyway — and re-keyed history loses the link to what happened | Use unpost or void; both preserve the story |
Refunds are not voids
Voiding says "this record was wrong." A refund says "the record was right — and now we're paying money back." The clean path in REDA Financials starts from a Credit Memo with unused credit: an Initiate Refund action creates a negative, Refund-type Cash Receipt that records the outgoing bank payment and consumes the memo's remaining credit. The full walkthrough is in Credit Memo Refund.
So, choosing the right tool:
- Recorded a receipt that shouldn't exist → unpost (young) or void (established).
- Customer's payment bounced → void; the invoices reopen and aging resumes.
- Customer overpaid or was over-billed and wants money back → credit memo → refund.
Where to go next
- Credit Memo Refund — paying money back, step by step.
- Applying Receipts to Invoices — un-applying without touching the receipt.
- Bank Reconciliation — why reconciled receipts are protected.
Frequently asked questions
Posted receipts represent recorded cash movement — deleting them would leave your cash ledger disagreeing with the bank with no trace of why. Only drafts can be deleted: "Posted or voided Cash Receipts cannot be deleted. Void the receipt instead."
Void the receipt with the void date set to the day the bank returned the check. The reversal backs out the cash on that date, the invoices it had paid reopen and resume aging, and both records will match the two lines on your bank statement (deposit in, returned item out).
No — reversals are system-generated and locked ("Reversal Cash Receipts are system-generated and cannot be modified."). If the void itself was the mistake, use Undo Void on the original receipt.
Each application gets a mirroring negative application from the reversal, so every invoice the receipt had paid gets its balance back automatically — you don't un-apply anything by hand.
Because the posting really happened — receipts are only ever Draft or Posted. Voiding flags the posted record as voided, locks it, and cancels it with the reversal. Look for the void reason and date on the record and the reversal on the Reversals tab, not for a status change.
It removes the reversal — unposts it and deletes it — so the original receipt stands again, applications and all. It's refused only when the reversal's date already falls in closed books, because removing it would change a closed period.
No — that's the difference from unposting. The original's entries stay in the ledger for the bank-reconciliation audit trail; the reversal adds offsetting entries on the void date. Unposting (Posted → Draft) is the path that actually removes entries — and it's only for young, unreconciled receipts.
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