Transaction numbers.

[Conrad Canterford]

On Sat, 2003-01-11 at 12:39, deane@mjollnir.gooroos.com wrote:
> What do people put in the 'num' field of transactions?
> When entering transactions for my Bank account, it makes sense to use the
> cheque number, although not all transactions happen via cheque (e.g.
> service charges, debit-card purchases, etc).
> When entering transactions dealing with invoices, it makes sense to use the
> invoice number.
> When entering expenses, maybe the expense number (assuming that you number
> your expenses) would be appropriate.
> But obviously, these numbers can overlap.  If I use cheque 312 to pay for
> expense 105, which is used as part of the work in invoice 448, I clearly
> have several options available to me.
> So what do most of you do?  Leave it empty?  Simply increment the number
> for each new transaction?

This number is also used as part of the sorting process (two numbers on
the same day are displayed in numerical order, if I remember correctly).
This is, of course, irrelevant to your question, but I thought I'd add
that.

I only use that field to record cheque numbers (exception: For netbank
(internet banking) transfers, I put "netbank" because these appear on my
statements differently to other transactions and it really helps to flag
it as a netbank transaction). I leave it blank for all other
transactions.
If you were paying invoices, for example, you could use the "action"
field of the split (if you're using "transaction journal" view) to
record numbers or similar things, perhaps. In this way, you'd be able to
pay two invoices with one cheque, and record the cheque number in the
num field and the invoice number for each split. Or something like that.
The "action" field is not used for anything that I remember.

Conrad.
-- 
Conrad Canterford  (conrad@mail.watersprite.com.au)
Water Sprite Pty Ltd   |  url - http://www.watersprite.com.au/
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