Skip to main content

Cancelling or Closing a Transaction

When a deal falls through — or closes successfully — you move the transaction into a terminal status so it stops appearing as active work and its automation winds down cleanly.

How to cancel a transaction​

Cancelling is a status change. Move the transaction into any status whose type is Cancelled (the seeded Cancelled status, or a custom one you created with the Cancelled type). You can change the status:

  1. From the transaction header — click the status chip and pick a Cancelled status
  2. From the Pipeline — drag the card into a Cancelled column
  3. From the Transactions list — use the inline status control
  4. From the transaction's Edit form — change the Status field and save

All four do the same thing. Closing a completed deal works the same way, using a Closed-type status. See Transaction Statuses for how status types work and how to add your own.

What happens when you cancel or close​

Moving a transaction from an open status into a Closed or Cancelled status is a terminal transition. DocJacket automatically winds down the deal's pending work — only for that transaction:

  • Incomplete key dates are marked Not Applicable (completed and waived dates are left as-is)
  • Open tasks are marked Skipped, noted "Transaction cancelled" or "Transaction closed" to match the status you chose
  • Pending scheduled messages are cancelled
  • Unsent reminders are deleted
  • Pending scheduled emails are deleted (already-sent emails are kept, so your send history stays intact)
  • Calendar events for the transaction are removed

Closed vs. Cancelled: both wind down pending work the same way. The difference is that a Closed status also fires your "closed" automation and pushes the closed stage to connected CRMs (like Follow Up Boss). A Cancelled status does not trigger closed-stage automation.

Terminal cleanup only touches this transaction

Every one of these changes is scoped to the single transaction you're cancelling. Nothing cascades to any other deal.

Cancelling a purchase but keeping the listing​

A listing and a purchase are independent transaction records — different deals, each with its own status, tasks, and dates. There is no automatic link between them, so cancelling a purchase has no effect on a listing.

If you have a separate listing and a separate purchase:

  1. Open the purchase transaction and move it to a Cancelled status
  2. Your listing stays exactly as it was — still open and in your queue

To find the listing afterward, open Transactions and filter the type to Listing (see Listings).

If you turned a listing into a sale or purchase

Turning a listing into a sale or purchase doesn't create a second record — it changes the same record's type. In that case there is no separate listing to keep, and cancelling the transaction cancels that single record. If you want it to go back to being an active listing, change its type and status back rather than cancelling — cancel will not restore or re-create a listing.

A deal fell through — putting a listing back on the market​

Often the "purchase" and the "listing" are the same record: you took a listing, it went under contract, and now the buyer has backed out. You want it to go back to being an active listing — still in your pipeline, with its tasks and key dates intact.

In that case, don't cancel the transaction. Cancelling is a terminal status, so it winds the deal down — open tasks become Skipped, key dates become Not Applicable, and reminders and scheduled emails are deleted. Moving the transaction back to an open status afterward does not automatically restore any of that, so you'd end up rebuilding your listing checklist by hand.

Instead, just move the deal back to an active status:

  1. Open the transaction and click the status chip (or drag its card in the Pipeline)
  2. Change the status from Under Contract back to an open listing status — Active, MLS Active, or whichever your office uses
  3. If you'd also switched the transaction type to Purchase or Sale when it went under contract, change it back to Listing

Because the deal never moved into a Cancelled or Closed status, nothing was wound down — your tasks, key dates, and automation are all still there, and the listing stays right where it was in your queue.

Cancel vs. change status

Cancel when the deal is truly dead and you want its pending work to stop. If the property is simply going back on the market, change the status instead — that keeps the listing active and preserves everything.

Reopening a transaction​

If you cancelled a deal by mistake, move it back into an open status to reactivate it. Because the terminal transition marked pending items as Skipped or Not Applicable, review the transaction's tasks and key dates afterward and restore anything that should be active again.