Debit Memo?

[Maf. King]

On Sunday 14 March 2010 08:43:03 Pablo Francesca wrote:
> I'm not sure if this a feature request or if I'm missing some gnucash
> accounting procedure. I have a customer who wishes to make a payment and
> have any outstanding credit on his account applied to his spouse's
> account.  This seems straightforward enough in accounting terms. I would
> take a payment (credit Accounts Receivable) and debit increase Assets:
> Undeposited Funds (dummy account used as intermediary to other asset
> accounts).  I would then create a credit memo (Payment) on the spouses
> account.  I would then like to create a debit memo.  I assumed I could then
> credit (decrease) Assets: Undeposited Funds and debit accounts receivable.
> My goal in all of this was to show a full payment on the customer's account
> along with a debit memo and also show a credit memo (payment) on the
> spouse's account. Problems arise because while Gnucash will let me credit
> Assets: Undeposited Funds and debit Accounts Receivable, none of my actions
> seem to have any affect on customer reports or Receivables Aging reports.
> So I dug into Accounts Receivable and while it seems you can manipulate
> values for Ref, Action, Customer, and Date, none of your actions seems to
> have any effect on customer reporting. I briefly thought about creating sub
> accounts under Accounts Receivable for each customer but my initial tests
> still indicate that this cumbersome approach still doesn't adequately
> report my attempts at creating a debit memo. I suppose at this point,
> someone might point out that I might simply create an invoice with a dummy
> invoice number and a memo that indicates that it is not an actual invoice,
> but merely a credit memo.  Well, yes, this makes the customer reporting
> work, but then I'm left with incorrectly recorded income. It makes no sense
> to create an invoice for a service that was not provided. So in the end I
> just decided to split the payment for the customer and his spouse (I still
> noted the spouse payment as a credit memo).  While this satisfies for
> accounting and reporting purposes, it still seems to bug me that the
> customer's reporting will still show a payment amount that is different
> than the actual payment received. (even though the discrepancy is noted).
>
> Am I missing something or is there no way to create something in gnucash
> akin to a Debit memo?

Hi,

You have to create transactions in A/P (and A/R) via the Business menu 
(Process Payment/ New Bill etc.) for the transactions to show up in the 
business reports.  If you manually create txns in the business registers, 
they don't get reported.

I think the way to do this is to use the menus to create transactions, then 
edit those transactions directly in the registers to put them in the correct 
transfer accounts.

HTH,
Maf.