Drafts and releasing
Every record in OnERP is in one of three states: draft, active or archived.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | tentative. Not referenced by anything, not numbered, not listed. |
| Active | operational, in use. |
| Archived | retired, but kept for the record. |
What a draft is
Section titled “What a draft is”A draft is a record being written. It is saved on the server, so nothing is lost by closing the tab, but it is not yet part of the business.
- A draft has no number. Numbers are allocated at release.
- A draft never appears in a list. It is reached by its own link, which is why Save as draft on an order’s Create Invoice opens the draft straight away — that is the way to it.
- A draft may be incomplete. Required fields and validation rules are relaxed, so a half-filled order saves and can be come back to.
- A draft causes nothing. No stock moves, no follow-up documents, nothing that depends on it runs.
Not every screen offers drafts. Configuration records — payment terms, number series, categories — are created active in a dialog. Documents are authored as drafts. A document another document spawns — a cancellation, a correction, a fulfillment order — is released in the same step, since everything it needs was decided before it was created; only an invoice created from an order offers a draft, for the fields a person still adds.
Releasing
Section titled “Releasing”Release turns a draft into an active record. In that moment:
- Every required field is checked, and every validation rule runs. A draft that fails one is refused with the reason, and stays a draft.
- The record takes its number from the series its profile names.
- Everything waiting on it can now run.
A release cannot be undone. What it locks depends on the record:
- A sales order stays fully editable while it is Open, including after it has been invoiced.
- A sales invoice can never be edited again. Correcting it means cancelling it.
- A fulfillment order seals when it is reserved, not when it is released.
Discarding
Section titled “Discarding”Discard removes a draft permanently. Nothing references it, so nothing breaks — and nothing survives. A draft is the one thing in OnERP that can be thrown away cleanly.
Unsaved changes
Section titled “Unsaved changes”Leaving a form with unsaved edits asks before discarding them. That is separate from discarding the draft itself: one throws away the last few keystrokes, the other throws away the document.
A record cannot change status while it holds unsaved edits. Save or discard them first.