Automatically split transactions with sales tax or VAT (Value added tax) when a transaction is booked to an sales or value-added-tax related account

[Nigel Titley]

Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 11:35:17AM +0100, Oliver König wrote:
>   
>> Hello,
>> I have posted two feature request for GnuCash at bugzilla:
>>
>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364378
>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371581
>>
>> Both feature requests are actually just one feature request. The first one 
>> describes the problem for users of GnuCash in countries who have got a Value 
>> added tax (e.g. Europe, etc) and the latter one for those countries with 
>> sales tax (e.g. USA). However the feature is the same in both cases:
>>
>>     
>>> Example:
>>> Let's say an American supermarket sells a t-shirt for cash 10.00 US$ (net),
>>> 11.00 (gross). The sales tax (sales tax 10%). . 
>>> The supermarket accountant enters a new split transaction in GnuCash:
>>>
>>> Bank(+) 11 -> Sales (+) 10.00
>>>                     -> Sales Tax(+) 1.00
>>>       
>
> this implies that you are using gnucash as a point of sale system,
> which I think it was not designed to do. It is fairly typical, I
> think, to split the operation of the point-of-sale system from the
> accounting system, although they can certainly be linked and talk to
> each other in some manner. I believe it to be excessive to enter EVERY
> sales transaction into gnucash (in my business, that would be upwards
> of 200 transactions per day!). rather, we track the individual
> transactions in a system designed for that and we use gnucash to enter
> receipts totals for the day/week/month whatever. this means we have
> only one split transaction for the period in question. 
>
> I am not, by any means, telling you how to run or account for your
> business, just my opinions on why this feature is not necessary for
> gnucash. Even a simple spreadsheet, with the appropriate formulas
> built in to it would probably be easier than using gnucash directly. 
>   
Well, this is the route I'm thinking of going down. My point of sale 
system does indeed keep track of individual transactions and I will 
probably write a daily totalling system once the level of transactions 
reaches manually unmanageable proportions. There is the minor issue of 
keeping the three types of VAT transactions seperate but I'm sure that 
if I sit down and think about it, the necessary information is sitting 
in the POS system.

I do see Oliver's point, about using the direct debit facilities of the 
on-line banking system, but in my case this doesn't apply, although I do 
have the issue of manually matching up payments that my credit customers 
make direct into my bank account with their bills. However, at the 
moment they are a small proportion of my sales, so quite manageable.

Nigel