Tech Tip: Trouble Deleting a Vendor Record

 I get the “Cannot delete. The vendor has existing inventory transactions.” message when attempting to delete a vendor record. What does this mean? How can I delete the vendor record?

 The message is displayed if the vendor you are attempting to delete has an existing received goods transaction. If the vendor has no other activities and the purchase order and received goods transactions are not valid, then perform the following to delete the vendor record:

1. Cancel the received goods. The cancel date must be in the same period as the received date. If the period to which the received date belongs has already been closed, then enter a date in the current period.
2. Cancel the purchase order.
3. Close the fiscal period to which the order date and received date belong. If the period was already closed, then close the current period. Note: Verify with your accountant that it is okay to close the period. If not, then you have to wait until your accountant gives the go-signal to close the period.
4. Verify that transactions were moved to the history file. Once done, you can now delete the vendor record.

If the vendor has valid transactions that are still in the current file such that you should not cancel these transactions, then you have to wait until these transactions were moved to the history file before you can delete/archive the vendor record.