Cancel & restore an invoice
Cancel an invoice to release its time, expenses, and fixed-fee reservations. Restore revalidates what can return to a Draft.
Cancelling voids an invoice and frees up the work behind it. Restoring brings a cancelled invoice back as a Draft so you can fix and reissue it.
- Role
- OwnerAdminManager
Cancelling and restoring are manager-tier actions.
Cancel an invoice
You can cancel a Draft or Sent invoice. If a Sent invoice has received a partial payment, refund its recorded principal fully before cancelling. A Paid invoice remains immutable even after a refund.
Open the invoice
Open the Draft or Sent invoice you want to void.
Cancel
Choose Cancel. The invoice moves to Cancelled.
Cancelling:
- Releases linked time entries and expenses back to billable and releases any fixed-fee reservation to its project balance. See Invoiced & locked time.
- Revokes the public share token — the
/i/[token]page now returns a 404. See Public links & views. - Resets the sent and viewed timestamps.
- Keeps the invoice number burned and leaves the row in place for audit.
Paid invoices can't be cancelled. If a Sent invoice has a partial payment, handle it through Refunds before cancelling; a fully Paid invoice remains on the audit trail.
Restore a cancelled invoice
Open the cancelled invoice
Open the Cancelled invoice.
Restore
Choose Restore. The invoice returns to Draft and is editable again.
Restoring does not re-link the original time entries or expenses. Because cancelling released them — and they may already be on another invoice — Hoursmith leaves them out to avoid double-billing. Valid fixed-fee and custom lines can remain, but Hoursmith rechecks the live contract balance and currency. The restored invoice opens in Edit so you can review and reselect sources.
What happens next
- A restored Draft can be edited and sent again (a new share token is minted on the next send).
- The original invoice number stays retired; a freshly created invoice takes the next number in sequence. See Statuses.
Tips
- To change a Sent invoice's content, cancel → restore → edit is the supported path (or duplicate it instead).
- Cancel rather than delete when you need the audit trail; delete only works on Drafts.
Troubleshooting
- I cancelled but the client's link still works. Refresh — cancelling revokes the token; see Invoice link broken.
- Restored invoice has fewer or no lines. Re-run the entry selection to re-add time and expenses, and review any fixed-fee allocation against the current available balance.