Advice on accounts receivable and consulting work.

[Paul Dickson]

On Mon, 20 May 2002 23:13:55 -0700 (PDT), Jesse Becker wrote:

> 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.

I found that if you play around with it, it will become apparent what will
work.

> 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.

I would put it under Assets.  Create an unbilled and a billed account.
Accumulate the transactions in unbilled, then once a month transfer the
total to the billed account when you write the bill.  When payment of the
bill arrives, move it into your checking account.

You might want separate accounts for unbilled account for each company you
are billing, but have just one account for the billed 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...

You can try splits for each block.  Each block will show up in the
transaction report.

Play around with it.  GnuCash seems to be very flexible, allowing
transactions to be moved later if you find a better way.

	-Paul