Business-feature questions

[Derek Atkins]

Mike,

Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> writes:

> Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>On Fri, June 3, 2011 8:30 am, Gareth Edwards wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>On 1 June 2011 07:06, Gareth Edwards <gareth at edwardsfamily.org.uk> wrote:
>>>    
>>>
>>>>I'm trying to use GnuCash to run the finances of a social club and I
>>>>have a couple of questions about the use of the invoicing and A/R in
>>>>GnuCash. Each member is a Customer, and subscriptions are invoiced
>>>>
>>>>1) Quite a few members pay in advance, which GC is showing as
>>>>pre-payment in A/R, which is fine. However, I can't figure out how to
>>>>show the current balance for any given member. How do I do this?
>>>>
>>>>2) One of our members has a positive balance and has decided to pay
>>>>the subscriptions for this month on behalf of another member out of
>>>>this balance. How do I transfer a payment from one Customer into the
>>>>account of another Customer?
>>>>
>>>>      
>>>>
>>>I guess this can't be done then? I'll have to revert to manual
>>>spreadsheets if that's the case, which will be a shame.
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>The former should be possible in the Customer Report.  Have you tried
>>that?  The latter is not currently possible -- there is no way for one
>>customer to pay "on behalf of" another customer.
>>
>>  
>>
> While I don't  use the "customer" features I'm not that sure an
> adjustment of this sort would be impossible. Let's try asking a couple
> questions.

The fact that you don't use the customer features is exactly why you are
asking these questions, and why they don't apply.  The business
transactions are not "regular" transactions.  They contain additional
metadata which is required for the business referential integrity (and
reporting).

So you cannot just "enter a transaction", you have to use the business
interfaces, which limits what kinds of transactions you can create.

> 1) If the first customer (the one who will be paying on behalf of the
> other) asked for a portion of his/her excess balance be refunded, is
> this possible? What would the transaction look like? (what is the
> other account in this case -- presumably checking as you cut this
> customer a refund check)

In this particular case the best way would be to create an invoice for
all the outstanding balance but instead of using Income:Sales use
Assets:Cash.  It's kinda a hack, but it'll work.

> 2) If the second customer (the one on whose behalf the payment will be
> made) were to be paying normally what would that transaction look
> like? (again, what is the other account -- presumably also checking on
> the opposite side from the first question as you deposit a check from
> the customer).

"What it looks like" is kinda irrelevant.  It's just a basic transaction
from A/R -> Checking, but it's the ancillary data that's important.  It
would require using the Business -> Customer -> Process Payment
interface to apply the payment.

> 3) You can't construct a transaction that does this? (those two
> entries to checking cancel  each other out)

No, you cannot, without using a third account.  You COULD create an
Invoice for customer 1 (the one paying for customer 2)..  But instead of
Income you use a suspense account.  Then you can Process Payment, but
instead of A/R -> Checking you would use A/R -> Suspense.

> Michael

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available