Feature request: process multiple invoice with single payment

[Mike or Penny Novack]

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>
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>Doing multiple non-consecutive invoices for the payment process would
>be arbitrarily complex.  At that point the real answer is a real
>solution to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108570
>
>In my business experience this disputing an invoice is extremely
>rare, so I dont think that supporting it is a large requirement.
>However, I'm beginning to actually believe that I should change
>the search to a dropdown.  But I have no time to do any implementation
>here.
>
>Patches welcome.
>
>-derek
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>
Rare, but remember the 80/20 rule (in general, 80% of the coding effort 
will for handling situations that are less than 20% of the time). In my 
experience, fully half of the coding effort will be for situations which 
occur only a couple percent of the time -- all the "exception" processing.

I only rarely was involved with the "invoice billing/collections" system 
unless the programmers there were really stumped or a disaster of some 
sort. But I still have a few suggestions:

1) Don't start with the coding issues or even what sort of drop down 
menus. Start with considering all the functionality that should be 
provided (what situations might arise, how to deal with), then how to be 
handled at the user view level (menus, etc.) and only then how you will 
implement.

2) I am getting a little concerned that I have not (yet) seen any 
mention of "suspense" (the usual name for the account into which amounts 
are dropped where the person dealing with the check that has come in 
can't immediately put it where it eventually goes). Take the check 
covering several invoice situation we are discussing. Customers can do 
odd things. Here's examples:
    Your are billing customers $10/mo for some service. The invoices are 
prepared some number of days in advance of the bill mailing so you 
assume that you will have an invoice available before the check comes 
in. People here seem to be talking about the situation where there are 
several as yet unpaid invoices and a check comes in to cover all of 
them. Fine, the invoices exist. But suppose the customer isn't behind. 
For the August invoice you receive a check for $30 (the customer is 
going away for a couple months, paying bills in advance -- but the 
corresponding invoices do not yet exist ). There are a number of ways 
your business can handled that, send a check back in return, prepare the 
future invoices and mark them paid, wait till they get produced in due 
course and pay them, etc. -- but none of these options are immediately 
available at the moment you are trying to process that check. Or how 
about a check for an amount that does not match the total of the 
invoices. Too little and you have an unpaid balance left on an invoice, 
you probably considered that. But what if too much?