Hope this might be helpful:
You've observed a standard and intended behavior in Business Central when dealing with G/L Account type lines on Sales Orders and their subsequent credit memos.
Explanation of Why the Original Sales Order is Not Updated:
G/L Account Lines vs. Item/Resource Lines:
- Item and Resource lines: These represent physical goods or billable services that have a tangible quantity, and their shipping/invoicing updates specific quantity fields (
Quantity Shipped
, Quantity Invoiced
, Quantity to Ship
, Quantity to Invoice
) on the Sales Order line to track fulfillment progress. When you create a credit memo for an item or resource line and apply it, Business Central actively tries to reverse these quantities to reflect the return or cancellation.
- G/L Account lines: These are fundamentally for posting directly to a General Ledger account for non-inventory or non-resource related charges (e.g., service fees, special charges, or miscellaneous income/expense). They do not represent physical quantities that are "shipped" or "invoiced" in the same way as items or resources. The "Quantity" field on a G/L Account line in a sales document is often just a numerical input for calculation purposes, not a tracking quantity that needs to be reversed.
-
No Quantity Tracking for G/L Accounts: Business Central's core design for G/L account lines on sales/purchase documents is not to track quantities for fulfillment purposes. The Quantity Shipped
, Quantity Invoiced
, Quantity to Ship
, and Quantity to Invoice
fields are primarily relevant for inventory management, warehousing, and resource planning. Since a G/L account doesn't have a physical inventory or capacity to track, these fields aren't updated or reversed.
-
Credit Memo's Primary Function: The credit memo for a G/L account line successfully reverses the financial impact of the original invoice (debiting/crediting the relevant G/L accounts and customer ledger). Its purpose is to correct the financial posting, not to "un-ship" or "un-invoice" a non-physical quantity.
✅Solution/Approach:
There is no direct "solution" to make a G/L Account line on an original sales order reflect a reversal in its quantity fields because this is not how G/L account lines are designed to function within Business Central's quantity tracking logic.
Your credit memo successfully reversed the financial transaction, which is its primary role for G/L Account lines.
If you need quantity tracking for "services" or non-inventory items:
- Consider using Service Items or Non-Inventory Items instead of direct G/L Account lines if you want the system to track quantities and have them reversed by credit memos for reporting purposes. Service items can be set up to behave like inventory items in terms of quantity tracking, but without physical inventory impact.
In summary: The observed behavior is by design for G/L Account lines. They are for financial postings, not for quantity tracking like items or resources. The credit memo correctly reverses the financial impact, and the sales order's quantity fields for a G/L line will not update.
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