Phantom Invoices

[retrointeractive]

I tried to sign up for the Flyspray and add this as a bug, but I never got my confirmation e-mail from the system so I'm submitting it here. I didn't see any similar issues in a quick search so I hope this isn't duplicating something someone has already mentioned...

 

Problem: If you begin creating an invoice for billable work or some other miscellaneous item that is not a product/service and then navigate away from the page or otherwise do not save the invoice, it still appears as an invoice in the client area.

 

How to recreate:

1) Create a test client

2) Click on "Clients"

3) Click on test client's name to view their information

4) Click on "Invoices"

5) Click on "Create Invoice"

6) Do not actually input any information or save anything. Just navigate away from the page.

7) Go to client area and log in as test client

It will now say "Outstanding Invoices: 1" at the top of the page

9) Click on "My Invoices"

10) Viola! You now have a phantom invoice in the client area that says that it was created and is due today for the amount of 0.00. Trying to view the invoice results in errors.

11) Go back to the administrative interface and back to the test client... no invoices are listed! So you can't even delete or modify the offending invoice.

 

If at step 5 you click "Create Invoice" and then go back a page and click "Create Invoice" again you will notice that even though you haven't saved or entered any data for the invoice, the invoice number keeps going up!

 

Also, if you click "Cancel" when you are creating the invoice, it doesn't actually add the invoice to the test user's account. It does exhibit the automatic increment behavior, though, which means it's still registering with the database somehow and incrementing the invoice number.

 

I'd really like to see this fixed because, although it doesn't happen often, it's really inconvenient to go through phpMyAdmin to delete the phantom invoices. I might as well use Excel if I'm going to do that kind of manual labor

[Matt]

Hi,

 

This is not an error nor is it a bug. This is the correct operation. The simple answer to your problem is never click the Create Invoice button unless you intend to create an invoice. However, if you do click the Create Invoice button accidentally this is not a problem, but don't just navigate away from the page, click the Cancel button at the bottom. There is no way to avoid this from happening as the invoice has to be created before you can add items so the invoice is instantly entered into the system but if you leave the page without clicking the Finish button you are leaving the payment method set to blank which will cause the error you are experiencing.

 

So, in short, always use the buttons at the bottom of the Create Invoice page - Save or Cancel - never navigate away from the page.

 

Matt