Questions Best way to delete an item on a sales order that has been back ordered.

My client has a situation where a customer ordered an item and the item had to be back ordered. The sales order right now is in the Backorder status.  The customer has decided to source that material from another vendor so we want to delete the back ordered item from the sales order.

The only way I have been able to accomplish this is to create the shipment, then delete it which in turns changes the status of the sales order which will then allow me to delete the line.

This seems like an awkward way of doing it.  Anyone have a different way of accomplishing this?

Thanks for your help in advance.