A/R, A/P, Invoicing features

[Derek Atkins]

Bill Gribble <grib@linuxdevel.com> writes:

> The standard approach here is for these things to have their own table. 
> You have a "contact database" that you use to build records for each
> vendor, customer, and employee.

Ok.  I guess I was thinking too much "in the box," or at least I was
trying to not go too far "out of the box."  Making these lists be
their own tables would, indeed, make life much easier in many ways.

> Then you attach a customer/vendor/employee id number to transactions,
> invoices, sales orders.  In gnucash you could do this with KVP info. 
> You can then write reports that generate results for a specific
> customer, because you can query out the transactions that are specific
> to that customer. 

Hmm.. So I wouldn't necessarily need to add any extra data to the
Splits/Transactions per se; I would just need to add extra KVP data to
link to the various parties.  *nods to self* That would certainly make
_that_ easier, too ;)

> That's the sales order.  ATM gnucash doesn't have anything even remotely
> like this, and it's going to be sort of a trick to make it happen ...
> one way or another you're going to have to add a lot of new stuff to the
> backends. 

I kind of assumed I would have to add to the backends, but I was also
hoping that I wouldn't have to add TOO MUCH to the backends.  If I
could leverage off of existing Accounts and Transactions, by using KVP
data, then I wouldn't need to change much of the back end.  But you're
right, I probably do need to store customer/vendor/employee
information in their own tables (like commodities).

> I think you need to think of this as entire new sets of data structures
> for gnucash rather than trying to wedge the concepts into the existing
> framework.  Invoices, Customers, Sales Orders are all first-class
> business objects like Transactions.  Sales orders can be "invoiced" to
> create invoices, and invoices hit the ledger in the form of
> transactions.  

My lack-of-accounting background is showing its colors.  If I knew
that these were first-class objects then I wouldn't have been so stuck.

Ok, knowing that these are first-class objects, let me go back to my
notes and come back with a better proposal :)

> The lack of these things is why gnucahs is a personal finance program
> and not a small business accounting program :)  You are tackling a big
> problem. 

Yes, but right now I've got nothing but time (at least until I find
another job or find some consulting work).  It's better than twiddling
my thumbs, and if I do get some consulting, well, maybe it would even
be useful to me :)

> b.g.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
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