Fishbowl: "Cannot unissue this PO" — already posted to accounting

What triggers it

The purchase order has already been posted, meaning Fishbowl exported it to your connected accounting system, and you then tried to unissue it to move it back to a draft (unissued) state. The dialog ends with the name of your accounting system and the sentence “Try Voiding the PO instead.” That trailing name fills in from whichever integration you run, so you will see QuickBooks or Xero (or another connected system) in the actual message. It is naming the exact place the PO already lives outside Fishbowl.

Why Fishbowl blocks it

Unissuing returns a PO to a draft state as if it had never been a firm order. But once the PO has been posted, accounting is already carrying it as an open commitment. If Fishbowl let you quietly revert it, the two systems would immediately disagree: your books would still show a purchase document that Fishbowl no longer considers issued. That gap distorts your open-PO liability now and your received-inventory cost later, because the receipt that lands against this PO would no longer trace back to a record accounting recognizes. Fishbowl blocks the unissue to stop that silent divergence before it starts.

What to do

Do not unissue. Void the PO instead, exactly as the dialog suggests. Voiding is the honest reversal: it closes the PO in a way that leaves a traceable record, rather than pretending the document never existed. This is a correction, not an undo. If the PO was posted but not yet received against, voiding is usually enough on the Fishbowl side.

If it is already reconciled or exported

If the PO has already been reconciled or matched on the accounting side, the void alone will not fully unwind it. You need a corresponding reversal in your accounting system so the open commitment there is cleared too. Handle it as a two-sided accounting correction, confirm both systems agree afterward, and keep the void and the accounting reversal dated together so the audit trail stays clean.