Business invoices over/pre payments

[Geert Janssens]

On Wednesday 30 April 2014 10:14:42 Mike Evans wrote:
> I've been struggling with paying multiple invoices with a single
> payment in version 2.6 and it doesn't work for me.  I've been
> reverting to version 2.4.13 to process my invoices.
> 
I hope it's just due to poor documentation. Let's see...

> Say I have two invoices the first for 400, the second for 600.  I
> receive a singe payment, by bank transfer, of 1000.  I open the
> payment dialog and pay 1000 against the first invoice.
Did you know you can select two invoices at the same time in the payment dialog ?

If you have both invoices entered already that would be the easiest way to assign the payment 
to both invoices in one go.

> According to
> the mouseover text (below) the extra payment should be automatically
> assigned to the second invoice.  This was the old behaviour and
> worked perfectly, matching up the reality of the 1000 deposit and
> paying off both invoices at a single stroke(or click).
> 
That old behaviour has been disabled by default because without it you have more control 
over which invoice gets paid by the overpayment. You can re-enable it via Preferences-
Business. There's a separate checkbox to control the behaviour of invoices and bills.

> Now however I try to so the same in 2.6 and it doesn't put the
> overpayent towards the next invoice like it should.  On attempting to
> pay the next invoice I see Pre-payment in the Process Payment dialog
> but no matter what I do with the Pre-payment it screws up my Bank
> register and doesn't get assigned to the invoice.
> 
Again, if you want to assign the pre-payment to your invoice you should select both the invoice 
and the pre-payment. That should render the amount to pay to zero and disable the transfer 
account list. If you now hit the ok button the payment will be assigned to the selected invoice 
without adding an extra line in your checkings account.

Note that this only works correctly as of gnucash 2.6.3.

> Additionally, from the text below which states "...or if no invoice
> was selected..." in either case I cannot make a payment without
> selecting an invoice.
> 
> In short, the new invoice payment system is broken for me and I can't
> use version 2.6 for my business.
> 
I hope we're just dealing with ambiguous help texts here...

> <mouse over text>
> If you have selected an invoice, GnuCash will propose the amount still
> due for it. You can change this amount to create a partial payment or
> an over-payment. In case of an over-payment or if no invoice was
> selected, GnuCash will automatically assign the remaining amount to
> the first unpaid invoice for this company. If you have selected an
> invoice, GnuCash will propose the amount still due for it. You can
> change this amount to create a partial payment or an over-payment. In
> case of an over-payment or if no invoice was selected, GnuCash will
> automatically assign the remaining amount to the first unpaid invoice
> for this company. </mouse over text>
> 
It looks to me this text has not been updated from the 2.4 era. In 2.6 you can select several 
invoice/payment lines together not one single invoice only. Additionally the over-payments are 
only automatically assigned to new invoices if the option is enabled in the preferences.

Any suggestion for a better mouse over text ?


Geert