Transaction Statuses
Transaction Statuses are a catalog of tags you define yourself (for example, "Pending Review", "Approved by Management" or "Ready to Ship") to track a document's or an item line's progress through your own internal workflow, on top of the document's regular state (saved, voided, etc.). Each status can have a person in charge assigned to it, who gets an automatic email every time a document moves into that status.
What is it and what is it for?
Many companies need to track internally which steps a document has gone through before it's considered done: who already reviewed it, whether an approval is still missing, whether an order is ready to ship, and so on. Transaction Statuses let you create your own tags for those steps and assign them manually to any transactional document in the system — invoices, sales orders, receptions, purchase orders, service requests and virtually any other document — or even to a single item line inside that document.
Unlike Service Request Statuses (which only apply to Service Requests, with a color and control over who can move them into each step), Transaction Statuses are a generic, simple catalog that applies to any document type across the company. Any user with edit permission on this catalog can assign any status to any document; the system doesn't enforce a sequence of steps or restrict who can jump from one status to another.
How to use it
- Go to Transaction Status, under the System Administration menu, and create the statuses your company needs (one per step in your internal workflow).
- Once at least one status exists, a Change Status button appears on the detail screen of the documents that support this feature (invoices, sales orders, purchase orders, service requests, trips, service contracts, and others).
- Clicking Change Status opens the list of available statuses along with a (Withdraw Status) option to leave the document without any status assigned.
- Pick the status you want: the document updates immediately, with nothing else to save.
- If the document has item lines, some screens also let you assign a status to one or several specific lines, independent of the document's overall status.
- If the chosen status has a person in charge with "Send Email" turned on, that person automatically receives an email with the new status, the document type, its number and the related customer or vendor.
- Use the Pending screen (inside Transaction Status) to see, at a glance, every document and line whose assigned status has you as the person in charge (or any user you pick, if you have permission), optionally filtered by subsidiary.
Key fields
| Field | What it's used for |
|---|---|
| Name | The status name as every user will see it when picking it (for example, "Approved by Management"). It's required and can't be repeated. |
| Notes | An optional free-text field to explain what this status means or when it should be used, as an internal reference for your team. |
| User | The person in charge of this status. They're the one who receives the notification email (if enabled) and who shows up as "Assigned to" on the Pending screen. |
| Send Email | If checked, every time a document or line moves into this status, an email is automatically sent to the responsible User, as long as they have an email address on file. |
Validations when saving
- The Name is required and can't be left blank.
- The Name can't be duplicated: you can't create two statuses with the same name.
- The Name allows up to 200 characters.
- A status can't be deleted while it's still assigned to any document or item line; the system lists the documents using it so you can reassign them to another status (or none) first.
Availability and permissions
- This feature is only available on the Enterprise plan; it doesn't appear on any other plan.
- Requires the "Transaction Status" permission on your user group: browse to view the catalog and the Pending screen, add to create new statuses, edit to modify existing statuses or change a document's status, and delete to remove a status.
- The button to change a document's status only appears once at least one status exists in the catalog.
- If your company has subsidiaries enabled, the Pending screen can be filtered by subsidiary.
Tips and common mistakes
"I don't see the button to change the status on my invoice or sales order". First check that your company is on the Enterprise plan and that at least one Transaction Status already exists in the catalog; the button only shows up once there are statuses available to pick from.
"I can't delete a status". A status can't be removed while it's still assigned to any document or item line. The error message tells you which documents are using it; change their status (or clear it with the "(Withdraw Status)" option) before trying to delete it again.
The notification email never arrived. The email is only sent if the status has "Send Email" turned on and the responsible User has an email address registered on their contact record.
Use the Pending screen as your daily work inbox: it shows, in a single table, every document and line whose assigned status you're responsible for, with direct access to each document, customer or vendor.