7.13. Employees

GnuCash can help your company by tracking employees. You can register a Section 7.13.1, “New Employee”, Section 7.13.2, “Find and Edit” existing employees, create Section 7.13.3, “New Expense Voucher/Credit Note” and Section 7.13.4, “Find Expense Voucher/Credit Note”.

Expense vouchers are used to reimburse employees for authorized expenses (f.e. travel, parking, food etc...). Employee credit notes are the opposite of expense vouchers.

7.13.1. New Employee

To register a new employee, select the BusinessEmployeeNew Employee menu item. The New Employee window will open with two tabs:

Employee tab

  • Identification - Employee Number - can be any number by which you would like to refer to this employee. You may leave it blank and a number will be chosen automatically. See Section 10.3.4, “Counters Book Options Tab” for more info.

  • Identification - Username (Mandatory) - a unique username to identify the employee.

  • Identification - Active (Optional) - differentiates active employees from inactive ones. This is useful when you have many past employees, and you want to see only those marked Active.

  • Payment Address - Name (Mandatory) - the full name of the employee.

  • Payment Address - Address (Mandatory) - the address of the employee.

  • Payment Address - Phone, Fax, Email (Optional)- other optional contact information for the employee.

  • Interface - Language (Optional) -

  • Payment Information - Terms (Optional) - specifies the default payment terms for this employee. Payment terms must be preregistered using BusinessBilling Terms .

  • Billing - Default Hours per Day (Optional) -

  • Billing - Default Rate (Optional) -

  • Billing - Currency - specifies the billing currency for this employee. It will default to the default currency set in Preferences

    Note

    All expense vouchers and credit notes for this employee will be denominated in this currency and GnuCash will require an Accounts Payable account in this currency.

  • Billing - Credit Account (Optional) -

Access Control tab

  • Access Control List

7.13.2. Find and Edit

To search for an existing employee, use the BusinessEmployeeFind Employee... menu. You select an employee to View/Edit from the results of the search. This window is also used to look up an employee when entering voucher and processing payments.

If many employees match the search criteria you provide, the search can be refined by running an additional search within the current results. The current result set is searched when the Refine Current Search radio button is selected. In fact, GnuCash selects this option for you after you run the initial search.

Note

If the employee you are searching for does not match the supplied search criteria, change the search criteria, click the New Search radio button and then the Find button. The relevant step is the New Search selection. If the employee is not in the result of the original search, and you only search within this set, the employee cannot be found, regardless of new search criteria.

Tip

To return a list of all registered active employees, set the search criterion to matches regex, and place a single dot . in the text field area. Make sure Search only active data is checked, then click Find. The regular expression . means to match anything.

7.13.3. New Expense Voucher/Credit Note

To register a new expense voucher/ Credit Note, select the BusinessEmployeeNew Expense Voucher... menu item. The New Expense Voucher window will open. You can enter the following data:

  • Voucher information - Type (Optional) - select if you are entering a Voucher or a credit note.

  • Voucher information - Voucher ID (Optional) - can be any number by which you would like to refer to this voucher. You may leave it blank and a number will be chosen automatically. See Section 10.3.4, “Counters Book Options Tab” for more info.

  • Voucher information - Date opened - the date of the voucher. Click on the button on the right of the date to open a calendar.

  • Billing information - Employee (Mandatory) - the employee to which the voucher refers.

    Tip

    The field supports auto-completion so if you start typing GnuCash will try to complete the text automatically using existing employees name. You can also press the button Select... to open the Find Employee window.

  • Billing information - Billing ID (Optional) - the identification number of the document (f.e. the bill number for a dinner).

  • Billing information - Terms (Optional) - the pay back terms agreement for this bill. A list of registered terms is available within the pop up menu.

  • Default chargeback project - Customer (Optional) - the Customer to which the voucher refers.

    Tip

    The field supports auto-completion so if you start typing GnuCash will try to complete the text automatically using an existing Customer name. You can also press the button Select... to open the Find Customer window.

  • Default chargeback project - Job (Optional) - the Customer Job to which the voucher refers.

    Note

    you can type in this field only if there are one or more jobs registered in GnuCash belonging to the selected Customer.

    Tip

    The field supports auto-completion so if you start typing GnuCash will try to complete the text automatically using an existing Customer name. You can also press the button Select... to open the Find Customer window.

  • Notes - records any additional comments about the voucher/credit note.

7.13.4. Find Expense Voucher/Credit Note

To search for an existing Expense Voucher, use the BusinessEmployeeFind Expense Voucher... menu item. You select an Expense Voucher to View/Edit from the results of the search. This window is also used to look up an expense voucher when entering vouchers and processing payments.

If many expense vouchers match the search criteria you provide, the search can be refined by running an additional search within the current results. The current result set is searched when the Refine Current Search radio button is selected. In fact, GnuCash selects this option for you after you run the initial search.

Note

If the expense voucher you are searching for does not match the supplied search criteria, change the search criteria, click the New Search radio button and then the Find button. The relevant step is the New Search selection. If the expense voucher is not in the result of the original search, and you only search within this set, the voucher cannot be found, regardless of new search criteria.

Tip

To return a list of all expense vouchers, set the search criterion to matches regex, and place a single dot . in the text field area. Make sure Search only active data is checked, then click Find. The regular expression . means to match anything.

7.13.5. Edit

From the Edit Expense Voucher window you can enter an itemized list of goods and services the employee bought or performed for the job, in a manner similar to how the account register works. For credit notes you enter an itemized list of goods and services charged back to the employee instead.

Note

Saved column layout works a bit differently in invoices from the account registers: Layouts are not saved for each invoice; instead a layout can be saved as a default for invoices to override the calculated widths using the View>Use as Default Layout for Employee Documents and the calculated widths restored as the default with View>Reset Default Layout for Employee Documents.

There are 10 columns in the Entries area:

  • Date - The date this item was sold.

  • Invoiced? - X means the item is attached to this invoice, an empty box means the item is not attached to this invoice. If the box is empty you can attach the item to the invoice by first selecting the item row and then clicking in this box.

  • Description (optional) - is what the item or service is called.

  • Action (optional) - is a user defined field. You can place Cost Center information here, or use one of the 3 predefined actions, Hours, Material, or Project.

  • Expense Account - selects the expense account to charge for this item.

  • Quantity - tracks how many of the items you bought.

  • Unit Price - is the unit price of the item.

  • Subtotal (uneditable) - computed subtotal for this item (less tax)

  • Billable - is this item billable to the chargeback customer/job?

  • Payment - How the employee was reimbursed. You might enter a check or petty cash voucher number here.

When you have finished entering all the items, Post the voucher.