How to edit an invoice in MYOB

Work out which kind of change you're making. Lines, amounts, the due date and invoice reminders can all be edited directly on the saved invoice. The customer can't, and MYOB treats that as a separate job, covered after the steps below.

If you use AccountRight on the desktop, a few settings decide whether a sale can be changed at all. The security preference has to allow changes rather than only reversals. A sale in a locked period needs the period unlocked first, and MYOB suggests thinking about how the change affects your accounts before you make it. A sale in a financial year you've already closed can only be changed after rolling that year back.

1. Go to the Sales menu and choose Invoices.
2. Click the invoice number to open the invoice you want to change.
3. Make your edits. You can add or remove line items, move the due date, or turn automated invoice reminders on or off and adjust their settings.
4. Click Save. If you want to keep working, the Save dropdown also offers Save and create new, Save and duplicate, and Save as recurring.
5. If the customer needs the corrected version, click Share and choose Email invoice, or copy the invoice link to send another way.

To put the invoice under a different customer, MYOB's method uses a recurring template. Open the invoice, click Save in the top-right and choose Save as recurring. Give it any Schedule name, leave the Frequency set to Never and click Save. Delete the original invoice if you don't need it. Then go to the Banking menu, choose Recurring transactions, open the template you just made, pick the right Customer, check the rest and click Save. Finally, open the template from Recurring transactions again, click Delete and confirm.

Once you save, the invoice carries the new details. Save and duplicate goes further and creates a second invoice with the same details under a new number, so use it only when you want a copy.

The customer workaround leaves you with a different result. If you delete the original, the invoice you save from the template is the only one left, under the right customer. If you take the customer return route instead, the original stays in the file, closed off by the return, and the audit trail shows what happened. MYOB says deleting and re-entering is fine for an invoice you've only just saved and haven't printed or sent, but in most cases you'll want that record.

The delete step in the workaround has a condition: if a payment has been recorded against the original invoice, the customer payment has to be deleted before the invoice can be.

In AccountRight on the desktop, a white zoom arrow next to a sale means it can't be changed, and a blue one means it can. To make sales changeable, go to the Setup menu, choose Preferences, click the Security tab and clear the option Transactions CAN'T be Changed; They Must be reversed, then click OK. Your user role has to allow changing preferences.

On the desktop you find the sale through the Sales command centre and the Sales Register, open it with its zoom arrow, change it and click OK. To swap the customer there, save the sale as a recurring transaction, delete the original from the Edit menu with Delete Sale, then use Lists, Recurring Transactions and Use Recurring to create the new sale, choose the correct customer and click Record. Delete the recurring transaction afterwards.