Business invoices over/pre payments

[Mike Evans]

On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:39:30 +0200
Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:

> 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

Hi Geert.

Ah OK, that clears everything up.  I didn't know about selecting multiple invoices and/or Pre-payments, or the Preferences option.  It definitely needs to go in the documentation.

As to mouse over text and the manual, I obviously need to have more experience with the new-fangled way of doing things before suggesting anything. :)

The two paras below are just me confirming the behaviour, it all seems to work as intended.

As a test in a new file I created two invoices of 400 each, posted them and received 1000 which I paid against invoice-01.  Then selecting invoice-02 + Prepayment(of 600) again processed the payment.  Now looking at my checking account I see 1000 in and 200 out.  But I wanted to keep that 200 against the next invoice I give the customer.  I can however delete that entry from the bank register and all is well again.

Now reopening the test account, without saving (in order to try again)  I do as above except, for invoice-02 I again select both the invoice and the Pre-payment and attempt to set it up so that the I get to keep the extra money.  On opening the dialog, in the Amount section, Payment = 0.0 and refund = 200, but I want to keep the 200. The customer is happy that I do this obviously.  Setting Refund to 0.0 greys out entire Transfer Account tree, which was a little confusing as I thought I'd screwed up again, but clicking OK processes the money the way I want.  I get to keep the money!

I assume you refer to "Auto pay on posting" in the Preferences dialog?   This only works when posting a new invoice when a Pre-payment is already present.  If the two invoices are already posted before the (over)payment then the automatic payment doesn't happen, as it used to.  I had to unpost then re-post invoice-02 for this to work.  Perhaps I mis-understood again.


Thanks for clearing up my confusion Geert.  I should open a bug (or two) for updating the manual and the mouseover texts so this doesn't get forgotten about.

Mike E
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