How to delete invoices and bills in MYOB
One at a time, in either product. Here is the exact route in MYOB Business and AccountRight, what blocks a delete, and when reversing is the better answer.
MYOB deletes invoices and bills one at a time — there is no bulk delete in either product. In MYOB Business you open the invoice and choose Delete; in AccountRight you open the sale and delete it from the Edit menu. If anything is applied to the record — a payment, a credit, a deposit — that has to go first. And if the record needs to survive for your audit trail, reverse it instead of deleting it.
What MYOB allows
| What you want to delete | Built-in option | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice with nothing applied | One at a time | Open it, choose Delete, confirm |
| Invoice with a payment applied | Delete the payment first | MYOB blocks the invoice until the payment is gone |
| Bill or purchase | One at a time | Same rules as a sale |
| Sales order with a deposit | Delete the deposit first | Then the order can be removed |
| Record in a locked period or old financial year | Not possible | Reopen the period/year, or reverse instead |
| Anything you need to keep for the audit trail | Reverse, don’t delete | Keeps the original entry and offsets it |
Last checked 3 October 2026, against MYOB’s own help centre. If the product disagrees with this page, trust the product.
MYOB Business: how to delete an invoice
- Go to the Sales menu and choose Invoices.
- Open the invoice you want to remove.
- Click the ellipsis menu (…) and choose Delete invoice.
- Confirm. If MYOB tells you there is a payment against the invoice, delete that payment first.
MYOB removes the invoice completely. Its own wording is that this “closes the invoice without affecting your account balances”.
AccountRight: how to delete a sale
Open the sale, go to the Edit menu and choose Delete Sale — or open the sale, right-click inside the sale window, and choose the delete option. When a sale is deleted it is permanently removed. If you would rather keep a record of it, reverse it instead.
Delete or reverse? This is the decision that matters
Deleting leaves no trace — which is what you want for a test entry or a bad import, and exactly what you do not want for anything your accountant may later need to see. Reversing keeps the original and posts an offsetting entry, so the trail survives.
The rule of thumb is the same one that applies across accounting software: if the record has been reconciled, reported, or seen by anyone outside your books, reverse it. If it is junk you just imported, delete it.
Why you might not be able to delete a sale
- User role — your MYOB role has to allow deleting.
- Security preference — AccountRight can be set to forbid deleting transactions at all.
- Locked period — a sale inside a locked period cannot be deleted until the period is unlocked.
- Financial year — the sale has to be in your current financial year.
- Payments and deposits — a payment applied to a sale, or a deposit on a sales order, has to be removed first.
Before you delete anything: back up, then export
On AccountRight, take a company-file backup first — that is a genuine restore point and the only undo MYOB gives you. On MYOB Business there is no restore point, so export the set you intend to remove and keep the file. Only then start deleting.
What a safe bulk delete looks like
You cannot delete what you have not exported. Reconciled lines and closed periods are reported as skipped, never forced — QuickBooks will not allow it, and a tool that tried would be the harm this design exists to avoid.
Is there a better way?
We build Multi-Delete for QuickBooks Online, not MYOB — so this page answers your question and stops there. There is no MYOB tool from us today; if a safe, self-serve MYOB cleanup ever makes sense to build, it will be described on these pages first.
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Questions people actually ask
How do I delete multiple invoices in MYOB?
One at a time. MYOB Business and AccountRight both delete invoices individually — there is no multi-select and no bulk delete. In MYOB Business you open the invoice and use its Delete option; in AccountRight you open the sale and delete it from the Edit menu. Each delete is its own confirmation.
Can I delete an invoice that has a payment against it?
Not directly. If a payment has been applied to the invoice, MYOB will stop you until that payment is deleted first. In MYOB Business you delete the customer payment, then the invoice. This is one of the most common reasons a delete “will not work”, and it is the one case where deleting something else changes your account balances.
How do I delete a bill in MYOB?
The same way as an invoice, and with the same limits: one at a time, from the Bills or Purchases list. A bill with a payment or a credit applied has to have that removed first, and a bill in a locked period or a closed financial year cannot be deleted until it is reopened.
What is the difference between deleting and reversing a sale in MYOB?
Deleting removes the sale permanently and leaves no record of it. Reversing keeps the original entry and offsets it, so the audit trail survives. If the sale has been reconciled, reported, or seen by your accountant, MYOB’s own guidance is to reverse rather than delete. Delete is for test entries and bad imports.
Why can’t I delete a sale in AccountRight?
MYOB lists the usual causes: your user role must allow deleting, AccountRight’s security preference must permit transaction deletes, the sale cannot sit in a locked period or outside the current financial year, and any payment or sales-order deposit applied to it must be deleted first. If none of those apply, check that you are in the company file you think you are.
Can I recover a deleted invoice in MYOB?
It depends on the product. In AccountRight, a company-file backup taken beforehand is a real restore point — that is how you get the invoice back. In MYOB Business (the cloud product) there is no restore point, so a deleted invoice is gone; too many deletions of the same thing is the reason the backup-first rule exists.
Does deleting an invoice change my account balances?
MYOB’s own wording is that a deleted invoice is removed completely and “closes the invoice without affecting your account balances” — the sale simply stops counting. But the related payment you may have had to delete first does affect balances, and removing it unwinds the money that was recorded against it. Delete the invoice, not the payment, unless you mean to.
Can you bulk delete invoices in MYOB?
No. MYOB’s own community carries an open request for bulk invoice deletion, and the standard answer in its threads is that the function does not exist. Everything on this page is the manual route, because that is the only route MYOB provides.