Advice on accounts receivable and consulting work.

[Jesse Becker]

I do some consulting work, and I'd like to use Gnucash to help me keep track
of what work for which I have billed clients, and what has actually been
paid.  In this realm, I'd like to get some advice as to the best way of
tracking this.

Work is done hourly, and I keep my time records elsewhere.  Clients are
billed monthly, and that involves me adding up all the hours spent working
for them, and sending them a bill for the entire month.

So I have two questions really:

1)  What are some recommend ways to handle this?  I've read the section in
the help files on account receivable, but a solid example would help.  If I
have an income for MegaCorp, I can create a transaction for the invoice,
using MegaCorp as the "source", and it seems that the "destination" is the
A/R account.  But where does the A/R account go (and what type is it) since
I haven't actually gotten the money yet.  After some time, I do eventually
get paid (usually in pork rinds, fish heads, or some other easily negotiable
currency), and it seems that amount would then get moved from the A/R
account to my checking account.

2)  My invoices itemize the work done, usually in terms of time spent on
projects, but it is fairly easy to "uniquely" identify each block of work. 
I know that Gnucash isn't designed for tracking workloads, but would it be
reasonable to enter each block of work as a single transaction?  This would
also seem to lend itself to using the "invoice" menu function as well...

Thanks in advance,

--Jesse

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