Where does Magento get its value for sales_flat_invoice.increment_id?

Question

I've been digging around in the database and the web trying to determine how this numbering system works.

I see that sales_flat_invoice.increment_id has the following information:

`increment_id` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Increment Id',

It is stored as a string and has no auto_increment value applied to it. I'm trying to determine how Magento really determines what value goes into this field. There were some articles stating that the value comes from eav_entity_store.increment_last_id but that doesn't line up with my current numbering sequence. increment_last_id matches my current orders but does not match the most recent sfi.increment_id.

Answer 1

The increment id is build from the value stored in eav_entity_store, here you can find thw last id used per entity type