Posting and Paying Invoices: What goes where?

[Michael T. Garrison Stuber]

Do _I_ need to see it?  No.  I use GnuCash for home finances and 
investments.  But, work with me here . . .

If I am trying to do some investigation of a transaction that has run 
amuck, and I call up business X (which uses GnuCash) and I say to business 
X hey, "I've got an issue with this invoice you sent me."  Under normal 
circumstances they'll say "what's the invoice number."  But let's say one 
of two things have occurred either (a), I'm a bozo and I lost the invoice 
I'm complaining about, or (b) something has run amuck with the system 
(something was misentered, the ink on the invoice was ruined, I've got a 
bad photocopy, whatever).  In this case I want to be able to reference 
thing not by business X's invoice number, but by my PO number.  (This can 
be especially true if I'm looking at my computer system where I have my 
purchase order, but not X's invoice).   So I tell business X', "my purchase 
order was 123".  Business X needs to be able to quickly find the invoice in 
question, using that P.O. number.  If there is a facility to do that 
somewhere, great, don't worry about it adding it to the ledger-- but 
personally, when I want to find something I don't usually run a report or 
use find transactions, I just change the sort order in the register and 
scroll to what I'm looking for.

The upshot of all this is as a client of business X, I'm going to be really 
pissed if they say "we have to have our invoice number, your purchase order 
number is meaningless."  (I speak from experience on this, I've had 
companies tell me things like this, and I wasn't happy.)  I want to make 
sure that GnuCash isn't one of the systems that users have to work around, 
rather than having it work for them.  I see the PO number as an equally 
valid (and very useful) way of referencing an invoice, especially when 
there is an order was filled incorrectly and needs investigation.  I would 
hope that both would be clearly visible throughout the system.  But, like I 
said above, if there is a more appropriate place for this where it is still 
easily accessible, I'm not in favor of cluttering things either.

--On Friday, May 10, 2002 11:33:32 AM -0400 Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU> 
wrote:

> You really need/want to see that information in the ledger view
> of A/R?
>
> The PO information is available in the Invoice itself, and will
> certainly appear in any printed invoices, but I'm asking what pieces
> of information go into the posted Transaction.  The Transaction is
> still linked to the Invoice (although there is not an easy way to get
> from the A/R ledger to the Invoice).  Do you really want/need the
> PO number in the Transaction?
>
> -derek
>
> PS: Thanks for your comments.
>
> "Michael T. Garrison Stuber" <garrisonstuber@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
>> It would be nice to include the customer purchase order number (if
>> there is one) somewhere in the memo or description of the invoice.
>
> --
>        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
>