Purchase Order to Purchase Invoice in Business Central: Partial Receiving and How to Cancel the Balance Without Upsetting Your Auditor
In Business Central the purchase cycle produces three separate records. Together they are your three-way match.
Finance signs off on the invoice because the receipt proves the goods or service arrived, and the order proves the price was agreed beforehand.
This post walks through one full cycle end to end, using a partial delivery, and finishes with the part everyone gets wrong — cancelling the small balance that will never arrive.
The scenario
We are buying a service — a purchase line of type G/L Account rather than a stocked item. This is very common for marketing, printing, subcontract labour and professional fees.
STEP 1Prepare the purchase order
Search Purchase Orders → New. Fill the header: Vendor No., Order Date, Expected Receipt Date, and Vendor Order No. if the vendor gave you their own reference.
On the line: Quantity = 100 and Direct Unit Cost = 25.00. Set your dimensions here, not later — dimensions flow from the order to the receipt and the invoice.
Once the PO is approved and the approval workflow is complete, the status changes from Open to Released, which means the order is approved to be received against. Send it to the vendor using Print/Send.
STEP 2First receiving — 80 units (partial receipt)
The vendor delivers 80 units against their delivery order. Open the purchase order and enter the vendor's DO number in Vendor Shipment No. on the header — this is what ties your posted receipt back to their paperwork.
On the line, set Qty. to Receive = 80. Leave Qty. to Invoice at 0.
Choose Post (F9) → Receive.
Business Central creates a Posted Purchase Receipt for 80 and updates the order line:
Because this is a G/L Account line and not a stocked item, posting the receipt does not create a general ledger entry. The expense hits your P&L only when the invoice posts. Your exposure sits in the Amt. Rcd. Not Invoiced field on the purchase line — RM 2,000 at this point. If the delivery and the invoice fall in different periods, that figure is what your goods-received-not-invoiced accrual should be based on.
The Undo Receipt action on a posted purchase receipt only works for lines of type Item. On a G/L Account line you will get an error, so there is no one-click reversal — the correction path is to invoice the quantity received and then issue a Purchase Credit Memo. Check the delivery order against Qty. to Receive before you press post, because on service and expense lines that number is much harder to take back.
STEP 3Invoice matching for the first 80
The vendor's invoice arrives for 80 units, RM 2,000. Create it as its own document rather than posting it from the order — one purchase invoice can then cover receipts from several orders.
Create a Purchase Invoice, select the vendor, enter the Vendor Invoice No., then choose Get Receipt Lines and pick the posted receipt. The lines are pulled in at the agreed price with the receipt reference attached.
Before posting, check the invoice total against the vendor document. If the vendor billed a different unit price, fix it here — the variance belongs on the invoice, not hidden in a manual journal.
STEP 4Second receiving — 15 units
Two weeks later, 15 more arrive. Same routine: update Vendor Shipment No. with the new DO number, set Qty. to Receive = 15, then Post → Receive. You now have a second posted purchase receipt sitting beside the first.
STEP 5Cancel the remaining 5, the audit-friendly way
The vendor tells you the last 5 will not be delivered. Business Central has no "cancel remaining quantity" button — the supported way to close the balance is to reduce the ordered quantity to the quantity you actually received. Done in the right sequence, that leaves a complete trail.
Do it before you post the final invoice. That way the last posting closes the order for you instead of leaving an empty shell in your open order list.
- Get the cancellation in writing. An email from the vendor, or your own short-close note, is the evidence. Without it, this is just someone quietly changing a number.
- Attach it to the order. Drop the email into the Attachments FactBox on the purchase order, then add a Comment line: "5 units cancelled — vendor unable to supply, confirmed by email 21/08/2026, approved by [name]." Reason, date, approver.
- Archive the original. Choose Actions → Archive Document to freeze a copy showing the order at 100 before you change it. View it later under Purchase Order Archives.
- Reopen and reduce. Choose Reopen, then change Quantity on the line from 100 to 95. Business Central will not let you go below the quantity already received, which is your safety net. Outstanding Quantity drops to 0. Choose Release again.
- Post the final invoice. Enter the Vendor Invoice No., set Qty. to Invoice = 15, and Post → Invoice. The order is now fully received and fully invoiced, so Business Central closes it out automatically.
Set Purchases & Payables Setup → Archive Orders to Always, so the order is also archived automatically when it closes, not only when you archive it by hand.
In Change Log Setup, switch on logging for the Purchase Line table, field Quantity. The log only records changes made after you switch it on — so do it now, not the week the auditor arrives.
What the auditor can now reconstruct without asking you a single question: the original commitment of 100 in the archive, two receipts totalling 95, two invoices totalling 95, a quantity change from 100 to 95 in the change log with a name and a timestamp, and the vendor's own confirmation attached to the document.
Quick answers
Steps verified on Business Central online, 2026 release wave 1. Field and action names are the same on recent earlier versions.
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