Editing a Transaction
How to edit an existing transaction, including linked entities, automatic fee handling, and recurring occurrence warnings.
Open the transaction first, then choose Edit transaction, in the side bar of its Details tab, or Edit at the top right on a phone. The edit popup has the same tabs as creation, apart from Schedule, centred on Basic Information and Relationships. This time you are changing a ledger line that may already be tied into balances, reports, customer history, or recurring processing.
Changes That Matter Most
- Transaction Type: Changing the type changes how the entry is interpreted in summaries and reports. Only do this when the original entry was genuinely the wrong kind of transaction. The choices are Charge, Payment, Expense and Tip. An adjustment made before stays one and can still be edited, with Adjustment offered on it, but once it's saved as another type it can't be made an adjustment again.
- Job, derived customer, and invoice: Relinking the job also refreshes the customer display, and Work Planner clears any invoice that no longer belongs with that job.
- Payment Method: Updating the payment method changes the fee calculation basis for payment entries.
- Opening Balance: Tick this on the job's earliest charge or payment when it is money the customer owed, or had in credit, before you started using Work Planner, so it's left out of your income figures. A later transaction can't be ticked, and its date isn't moved for you as it is on a new one. Nor can a charge or payment recorded on a worksheet or when the job was marked done, or a card or Direct Debit payment, so it isn't offered on those. If you move an opening balance to a later date or another job, it still has to be that job's earliest transaction, or it won't save. You can untick it at any time, which also clears an Opening balance description it filled in, and changing the entry to a type other than a charge or payment takes the tick off.
- Vehicle: On an expense, charge, payment or tip, changing the van moves the entry to that van in its reports. Use it when a cost or a payment went against the wrong van, or a cost was saved without one. A van that has since been sold stays on offer for the entries that already have it.
- Amount and VAT fields: Amount is required. VAT Rate now comes from the popup list, and VAT and Net Amount are recalculated from the current amount and VAT rate, so those three fields should be checked together before saving.
- Payment Reference: This is often the easiest field to correct later when the money was right but the traceable reference was missing or wrong.
- Money given back: When you've handed some or all of a payment back, leave the payment as it is and record a refund against it with Refund on the payment, so your records show both. See Refunding a Payment Taken by Hand.
- Sent to HMRC: A transaction already sent to HMRC can still be changed or deleted, and the popup says so at the top. If it was in a VAT return, your next VAT return includes the difference, listed under Putting right returns you’ve sent in its figures on the VAT page. Your next Income Tax update sends the whole tax year again, with the new figures. A VAT return you marked as sent on the VAT page, because it went another way, isn't put right like this: tell whoever sent it about the change.
Attachments
- Attachments tab: Add or remove receipts and supporting documents on an existing transaction.
- Saved immediately: Unlike the other fields, attachments upload and delete as soon as you act on them. They are kept even if you close the popup without saving the rest of the form.
- The only place to change them: The transaction detail view shows the same attachments but is read-only, so adding and removing is always done here.
Repeats
An entry that a repeating schedule added has a Repeats line at the bottom of Basic Information. It says how often the entry repeats, such as Every month, and underneath, whether the schedule is Active or Inactive. View, beside it, opens the schedule. The line is there for reference and can't be changed here. A cost that repeats is stopped with Stop on the Repeating Costs tab of Expenses, and other repeating transactions on Scheduled Transactions.
When Editing Is Blocked
Transactions linked to transferred customers or transferred jobs are protected. When that happens, Work Planner shows a warning and blocks editing so the financial history cannot be changed on a record that has already moved business context.
After Save
- The same ledger line is updated: Work Planner edits the existing record rather than creating a new one.
- Search results refresh: Any description, reference, or linked-entity changes feed straight back into the Transactions list and detail view.
- The schedule stays as it is: Editing an entry a schedule added changes that entry only, not the schedule or the entries it adds later.
Related articles
- Creating a Transaction: Useful when you want to compare the original field setup with later edits.
- Transaction Detail View: Shows the information worth checking before you edit.
- Payment Reference and Status Handling: Helpful when the confusion is around the wording on the record rather than the amount itself.
- Transaction Attachments: Covers accepted file types, previewing, and permanent deletion.
- Refunding a Payment Taken by Hand: Recording money you've given back instead of changing the payment.
- Scheduled Transaction Detail View: What View, beside Repeats, opens.