Sales

Document Numbers

How Trabalance numbers a sales document: a customer prefix, a type prefix and a six-digit sequence. Drafts carry a D- marker and revision suffixes. Numbers are never reused.

You do not type a document number. Trabalance mints one when you save, and the shape of it tells you three things at a glance: who it is for, what it is, and where it sits in that series.

Numbers as they appear on a list — the customer prefix, the type prefix and the sequence.

The shape of a posted number

ACME  INV  000127
 │     │     └── six-digit sequence, per business and per document type
 │     └──────── type prefix
 └────────────── the customer's own prefix, from their record

The customer prefix comes from the customer's record. A customer without one simply produces a shorter number — INV000127.

Type prefixes

Sales document prefixes

Document	Prefix	Example
Invoice	INV	ACMEINV000127
Proforma invoice	INV	Shares the invoice series deliberately
Sales order	SOR	ACMESOR000042
Estimate	EST	ACMEEST000045
Sales receipt	SRP	SRP000913
Receipt	RPT	ACMERPT000212
Credit note	CRN	ACMECRN000018
Delivery note	DLN	ACMEDLN000067
Customer refund	CRF	ACMECRF000004
Statement	STM	ACMESTM000002
Opening balance	OPB	ACMEOPB000002
Invoice link	ILK	ILK000011

Draft numbers

A document saved as a draft is numbered the same way with a D- in front: D-ACMEINV000131. Saving the same draft again adds a revision marker — D-ACMEINV000131-R1, then -R2.

✅A draft number is not the number you will end up with

The draft series and the posted series are counted separately. When you eventually post the draft it is given a fresh number from the real sequence, and the D- number is gone. Never quote a draft number to a customer.

Rules the numbering keeps

Rule	What it means for you
One sequence per business, per document type	Your invoices and your credit notes count independently. Two businesses in the same account never share a series.
Numbers are never reused	Voiding ACMEINV000127 does not release the number. The next invoice is 000128.
Gaps are possible and are not a fault	A voided document leaves its number occupied. An auditor should see a gap where a document was withdrawn — that is the point.
A manually typed number is respected	If you type a number that falls in the series Trabalance would have used, the sequence steps past it so the two never collide.
The number is assigned at save, not at open	Two people creating an invoice at the same moment get different numbers, because the sequence is allocated atomically at the moment of saving.

⚠️Draft numbers are not collision-proof

Posted numbers are allocated atomically and cannot clash. Draft numbers are counted rather than allocated, so two people creating a draft of the same type at the same instant can be handed the same draft number. It has no effect on your ledger — a draft posts nothing — but do not treat a draft number as unique.

Where the number appears

The document number is the first column of every list and can never be hidden. It is the page title on the document. It is on the PDF header, and again in the PDF footer unless you turn that off in Customize PDF. It is what the void dialog asks you to type before it will act.

Where numbers are read: Tracking sales documents.
Why a number stays occupied after a void: Editing, voiding and restoring.
Drafts and how they behave: Creating an invoice.