Void or write off an Invoice

Void one sent in error. Write off one that will never be paid — and the write-off belongs to the Period you decided, not the Period the Invoice does.

Before you start

These are two different statements about the world, and picking the wrong one misstates your books.

Void says this Invoice should never have existed. A mis-keyed amount, the wrong Client, a duplicate. The revenue is undone.

Write off says this Invoice was right, and we are not going to be paid. The revenue stands, and a bad-debt expense stands beside it. That is the honest record of a sale that went bad, and it is what your accountant expects to see.

An Invoice that has been paid can be neither. That is a refund, and it is a different act.

When a write-off is dated

In the Period you make the decision, not the Period the Invoice belongs to. An Invoice from last March, given up on in November, is written off in November.

This is the direct write-off method, and it is chosen deliberately. Dating it back to March would restate a month that has already been reconciled and reported — and if that year’s return had been filed, it would simply be refused, so the same decision would behave differently depending on the calendar.

Steps

Good to know

If a written-off debt is later paid, the write-off is undone rather than answered with a second, opposite entry. One event, one record, reversed when it turns out not to have happened.

Both actions happen in Stripe and arrive in the books through the same path that records every other Stripe event. A write-off done directly in the Stripe dashboard lands in Pippin the same way.