Is Bills Due Reminder broken ?

[John Zoetebier]

On 09 Jul 2003 11:01:15 -0400, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> John Zoetebier <john.zoetebier at transparent.co.nz> writes:
>
>> I have entered the transactions of the last three months in gnucash.
>> Reconciled all bank accounts.
>> To my big surprise when restarting gnucash I got 7 Bill reminders.
>> Not knowing what the problem was I paid one of the bills again and
>> removed the original transaction from account Payables.
>
> how did you "pay the bill"?  Did you just enter in a transaction by
> hand?  If so, that's not the right way to pay a bill.  You MUST USE
> the "Process Payment" interface in order to pay your bills.  The Bills
> Due reminder will keep on reminding you until you pay your bill
> through the proper interface.

Yes, I did use "Process Payment" interface.

>
>> Now other bills are reminded.
>> I repeated this with other bills and the result is actualy
>> unpredictable with regardto bill reminder.
>
> Uhh, I don't know what you mean, here..  I'll go test it some more,
> but it should print out in a consistent order from run-to-run.
> Admittedly I don't actually set an order...

>> It seems that no matter what I due the system keeps reminding of bills
>> that have already been paid with ever changing amounts.
>
> HUH?  "Ever changing amounts?"   This I don't believe.

I made a backup of my files, which I am happy to send you in ZIP format.
Provided you keep the information confidential of course.
That way it is easy to reproduce the problems.
Just "Process Payment" for 1 invoice, restart system and see what happens.

>
>> Also the order in which bills are reminded changes each time I restart
>> gnucash.
>> It seems there is no order on date, company or amount.
>
> This also seems strange -- the query should return a consistent order
> run after run.  But I'll take a look anyways just to make sure.
>
>> Luckely enough I can switch off the bill reminder under preferences.
>> My question: is Bill Reminder broken ?
>
> Well, the 1.8 Bills-Due reminder was a hack.  CVS HEAD has a
> completely new infrastructure in place for reminders like it, but
> back-porting to 1.8.4 would be more work than I want to do.  However,
> what's there in 1.8.4 shouldn't be broken....
>
> Could you give more explicit examples?

I can send you my files.
Do you need all of them ?

-- 
John Zoetebier
Web site: http://www.transparent.co.nz