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Document Flow
Document Flow is the NGB surface that lets users and developers traverse the business chain around a document.
Typical relationships include:
- based on;
- derived from;
- reversed by;
- applied to;
- settled by;
- operational follow-up document.
Why document flow matters
Without document flow, a business system becomes a collection of disconnected records.
With document flow, users can answer questions such as:
- where did this document come from;
- what did it generate;
- what reversed it;
- what settled it;
- what is the full business chain for this case.
That makes the platform easier to operate, support, and audit.
Typical business chains
Examples of document flow in practice:
- Sales Order to Sales Invoice to Customer Payment;
- Lease to Rent Charge to Receivable Payment to Apply;
- Maintenance Request to Work Order to Completion;
- original invoice to correction or credit memo.
Document flow is not just a foreign key
Production document flow should behave like a reusable relationship graph.
That means the platform can present:
- upstream context;
- downstream outcomes;
- cross-document lineage;
- consistent navigation between related records.
Relationship quality rules
A strong document flow model should make relationship semantics explicit.
The relationship should tell the reader not just that two records are connected, but why they are connected.
UI expectation
Users should be able to open a document and understand:
- its current status;
- its related business chain;
- whether later documents came from it;
- whether it was corrected, reversed, or settled.
That consistency is one of the platform’s main explainability wins.