Business Central will not post a document whose posting date is empty, so the mandatory field check names the field, the table and the document and stops. Enter a posting date on the document, here credit memo 1005, and post again. When the document came from an import or an integration, the missing date has to be supplied by whatever created it.
Why Business Central raises this error
Posting date is mandatory on every document and journal line because it decides which accounting period the resulting entries land in, and Business Central has no safe default to invent. When something tries to post a record whose posting date is still blank, the field validation refuses and reports the table, the document type and the number. Documents created by hand rarely hit this, because the field is prefilled as soon as the document is created. It shows up where the date was never written or was cleared later: imports, API calls, copied documents, or a company setup that deliberately leaves the posting date empty so that a person has to type it.
- Sales & Receivables Setup has Default Posting Date set to No Date, so every new document is created with an empty posting date and waits for someone to fill it.
- The credit memo was created through an API, an EDI flow or a data import whose payload or mapping does not include a posting date.
- The date was cleared while editing, for example after copying an existing document or after changing the document date.
How to fix it
- Search for Sales Credit Memos (Alt+Q) and open the document named in the message, here No. 1005.
- On the General FastTab, enter the Posting Date, and check the Document Date at the same time so the two stay consistent.
- If every new document arrives without a date, search for Sales & Receivables Setup and look at Default Posting Date: No Date leaves the field blank on purpose, Work Date prefills it from your work date.
- Confirm the work date in My Settings, because that is the value a new document inherits when the setup prefills the posting date.
- If the document is created by an integration or an import, the posting date has to be added to the payload or the mapping. That change is made by whoever maintains the integration, not on the document.
- Post again, making sure the date you entered also falls inside the posting range you are allowed to post in.
How to avoid it in the future
Set Default Posting Date to Work Date unless your finance team has a deliberate reason to force manual entry, and make the posting date a required field in every import, API mapping and configuration package that creates sales documents. Where documents arrive from customers or portals, automated capture reduces the number of headers typed by hand and therefore the number of half filled documents, but the mandatory field still has to be mapped somewhere.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the message mention Sales Header?
Sales Header is the table that stores the document header. The message points at the header record of the credit memo, so the date has to be filled on the document itself, not on the lines.
Can I post with only a document date?
No. The document date is informational, while the posting date decides the accounting period, so it is mandatory. The two may hold different values, but the posting date can never be blank.
Related reading
- Posting Date, The date that decides which accounting period a Business Central transaction lands in, distinct from the document date and the VAT date.
- Sales Credit Memo, The Business Central document that corrects or refunds a posted sales invoice, reversing revenue, VAT, and the customer balance.
- Customer Ledger Entry, The transaction record in Business Central tracking every posted invoice, payment, and credit memo for a customer, where open entries show what is still owed.
- How to Run a Month-End Close in Business Central
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