Why You Cannot Delete a Deal: Locked Deals, Deposits, and Deal Access

Deleting a deal is blocked by two specific conditions, in a fixed order: a deal that has been sold and locked cannot be deleted until it is unwound, and a deal carrying a deposit balance cannot be deleted until the deposit is cleared. Neither is a permission problem, and neither can be overridden by giving someone more access.

This article is only about deleting a pending or unwound deal from the deal list. For reversing a sale, see the unwinding and unselling articles; for a deal you want to keep but stop working on, change its status rather than deleting it.

Questions this answers

• "I'm trying to delete a deal we don't need anymore and it's telling me I can't because it's locked. What do I do?"
• "My sales manager has full access to deals but still can't delete a locked deal. Is that a bug in their permissions?"
• "Can I just delete a deal that still shows a deposit sitting on it, instead of unwinding it?"

A sold, locked deal has to be unwound first

When you try to delete a deal that has been sold, the confirmation dialog does not offer a delete button at all. It says:

This deal has been sold and cannot be deleted. To remove it, first unwind the deal by going to Deal > Contract and selecting Unwind.

The only button is Close. Unwind the deal from Deal > Contract > Unwind, which puts it back to a pending state, and then delete it if you still want it gone.

The dialog also carries the caution that unwinding and deleting a deal may affect your QuickBooks accounting transactions, and to do it only if no funds have been exchanged and the vehicle has not left the lot. That is worth taking literally — if money has moved or the car is gone, unwinding is an accounting decision, not a tidy-up.

Full deal access does not get past the lock

This is the part that gets reported as a permissions bug. Deleting a deal does require full deal access — someone at view or edit level cannot delete at all — but full access does not unlock anything. The sold-and-locked check runs before access level is even relevant, so your sales manager with full access is stopped by exactly the same message as everybody else.

Unwinding is its own action with its own permission on the role, separate from deal access. If the manager needs to complete this without help, that is the right thing to grant — not more deal access.

A deposit balance blocks the delete too

A deal that still shows a deposit balance is refused with There is a deposit balance on this deal. Please clear the balance and then try again. Refund the deposit or void the payment from the deal's Account Summary, or allocate it if the sale went through, and then delete.

Because the checks run in order, a sold deal with a deposit on it reports the lock first and says nothing about the deposit. Expect to clear both: unwind, then clear the deposit, then delete.

Deleting is permanent

The confirmation on a deal that can be deleted reads Record will be deleted permanently. This operation is not reversible. There is no recycle bin and no undo, so on anything that carries history — payments, deposits, signed paperwork, accounting entries — prefer unwinding or a status change over deletion, and contact support if you are unsure which you want.