Document Sequences

You can assign a document sequence number to each business document or business event to uniquely identify it. For example, you can assign a document sequence number to an invoice that gets generated in response to a purchase order.

However, you must enable the document sequencing option for that business document or event to start assigning the number. A document sequence number is useful in tracking completed or failed transactions.

You can set up document sequencing in three different modes:

• Automatic

• Manual

• Gapless

Note: Plan your document sequencing carefully before you start applying sequence numbers. Avoid switching to a different mode after you saved your work on the Manage Document Sequences and Manage Document Sequence Categories pages.

Automatic Sequencing

Automatic document sequencing assigns a unique number to each document automatically when the document is generated. That unique number is stored in the database. You can set an initial value for the numbering sequence. Thereafter, the numbering is sequential by date and time of creation. If you don't provide an initial value, the application sets the default initial value as 1.

However, you might notice gaps in the numbering sequence because automatic sequencing isn’t gapless.

Manual Sequencing

Use the manual sequencing mode to assign a unique number to each document before the document is generated. In manual sequencing, the numeric ordering and completeness of a transaction isn't automatically enforced. As a result, users can skip or omit numbers when entering the sequence value. However, each time a user assigns a number, the application validates its uniqueness.

Gapless Sequencing

Gapless sequencing is similar to automatic sequencing. It automatically generates a unique number for each document, but does that only for successfully generated documents. Sequence numbers aren't assigned to incomplete or failed documents. As a result, the sequence is maintained for all the successfully generated documents.

Additionally, you can control the gapless document sequencing by enforcing the Transaction Date Validation option. When enabled, this option checks for the transaction date of a particular document and assigns the sequence number accordingly, to chronologically maintain the documents. The sequence numbers and the transaction dates are chronologically correlated to prevent any mismatch of a new document sequence assigned to an older document or an older document sequence assigned to a new document.

Note: Use this type of sequencing only if necessary because it may affect the performance of the application and slow down transaction processing.