Why does my Sales Order/Job/Quote numbering seem to skip numbers?
This knowledge base article assumes that Auto-Numbering is activated under (Admin > Main Setup), which is the case for most companies using DBA.
The most important piece of information in this knowledge base article is: DBA has a single pool of available numbers that is used to auto-number all Sales Orders, Jobs and Quotes. There is no separate pool of numbers available for each of those modules.
So, for example, if looking at Sales Orders and noticing some gaps in the numbers, there is a good chance any missing number was already taken by a Job or Quote. Whichever of those modules needed a number is the one that will get the next number in the available pool of numbers.
There is also the chance that someone began entering a Sales Order, Job or Quote and then decided to delete it. This would "burn up" that number and the system would move on to the next number. This is a good example of a case where you go searching for a specific number in all 3 modules but can't seem to find it.