What a document freezes

Correcting a customer’s address does not silently rewrite last year’s invoices. Some facts a document copies when it is made; others it keeps reading. Knowing which is which explains most surprises.

The rule

A document copies outcomes. It keeps a link to identities.

Kind of fact	On the document	Effect of editing the master record
The customer’s address	copied when the customer is picked	future documents only
The price on a line	copied when the line is priced	that line is re-priced only if one of its own inputs changes
An invoice’s due date, discount deadline and discount rate	copied at release	no effect on issued invoices
The customer itself	a link	the name on screen follows the record
The product on a line	a link	the name on screen follows the record
The customer’s VAT registration	read live	re-deciding tax reads the current registrations

Why addresses are copied

Picking a customer copies their address onto the document, and the document works from that copy. The tax treatment is derived from the copy, so the document’s tax cannot drift when someone corrects a typo in the partner record months later.

Correcting an address therefore corrects future documents. Fixing an issued one means cancelling and reissuing it.

Why terms are copied at release

An invoice resolves its payment terms into four values of its own: the due date, the last day a discount can be earned, the rate granted, and the discounted total.

The rate is stored even though it already exists on the terms record, on purpose. It is the rate the invoice went out with, and the e-invoice transmits it verbatim. Editing the terms record agrees new business; it does not re-date old paper.

A sales order does not stamp any of this. It agrees the terms and owes nothing yet. See Payment terms.

Why VAT registrations are read live

The tax treatment re-runs whenever one of its inputs changes, and reads the customer’s current registrations when it does. A customer who registers for VAT mid-year does not retroactively change documents already made — but a document edited afterwards is re-decided on what is true then.

What the document froze is its copy of the address, not the registration.

What this means in practice

• Fix master data freely. Issued documents do not move.
• A document that looks stale probably is, deliberately. Compare it against the master record before assuming a bug.
• To change an issued invoice, cancel it. See Cancel an invoice.
• Archiving a partner or product leaves every document it appears on intact — which is why archiving exists instead of deleting. See Actions and archiving.

Every change to a record, and when it happened, is in Record history.