Posting and Paying Invoices: What goes where?

[Derek Atkins]

I'm currently working on posting invoices and processing customer
payments.  In this work, I've come up with an interesting quandry: how
to link all the "necessary" information into the Transactions and
Splits so that enough information is displayed in the ledgers.

I've got an interesting question for you all.  When an Invoice is
posted it creates a Transaction with all the appropriate Splits, but
somehow it needs to fill in all the various Transaction and Split
fields that are visible in the various Accounts.  The question is:
what pieces of information should go into which fields in the
Transaction and Split?

In particular, the pieces of information I have to work with (I'm
ignoring the numeric portions -- those are obvious) are:
        Invoice Number (my reference)
        Customer (name)    (or Job name)
        Short Memo/Description

When a Customer pays me, I've got:
        Reference (their check number?)
        Customer (name)
        Short Memo/Description

So, what information should go where in the Transaction and Split
information?

Currently I've got (from the posting side):
        Txn Number	<- Invoice Number
        Txn Description	<- Customer Name

I obvious don't have the Short Memo/Description stored anywhere.
Where should this go?  Should I perhaps change this to:

        Txn Number	<- Reference (Invoice Number, Check #, etc)
        Txn Description	<- Short Memo/Description
        Split Memo	<- Customer Name

Where the Split Memo is the Split attached to the A/R (or A/P) account?

If I make this change, then looking at the A/R ledger you will not see
customer names in plain view (although I suppose I could fix that).

I know that some of this is going to have to change once Lots are
introduced; I don't know how that's going to affect it.

Any suggestions?

-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@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available