Is Bills Due Reminder broken ?

[John Zoetebier]

On 10 Jul 2003 00:15:52 -0400, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> John,
>
> I'm about to head to bed (it's after midnight here).  I've been
> looking at your data file, and I just don't understand what's going
> on.  It seems like you had a bunch of invoices and payments made, and
> then you unposted a bunch of invoices, and then re-posted them, and
> did this a few times...

Right.
For example I entered a bill and discovered during "Process Payment" that 
the actual amount was 1 cent out.
I had to go back, unpost, fiddle the amount, post again and then process 
payment.
An other example is the invoice date.
I discovered that the invoice date was wrong.
I could not change the invoice date as it was disabled.
I unposted the bill, removed all items and discovered that I could not 
remove the invoice.

>
> Internally, GnuCash uses "lots" to keep track of invoices(bills) and
> payments.  I've mannually followed your bills and payments for NetTel
> and it's just really strange.  For example, you've got a payment of
> $5.19 applied on 4/28, of which 4.54 is applied to lot #1 and .65 is
> applied to lot #2.  lot #1 also has 7.12 (out of 8.14) on 5/26, -5.19
> on 4/28, and then .65 also on 4/28.  Obviously, this doesn't add up to
> 0 -- indeed, there is an extra 7.12 in this lot.
>
> What I don't understand is how this happened.  Is there any chance you
> could walk me through the exact, step-by-step process you did to enter
> these bills and payments?  If I can understand what you did to get it
> into this state I might be able to figure out where the logic is
> wrong.  Basically, what you have here just shouldn't happen (although
> clearly it did).
>
> So, any guidance on what you did and how you did it would be greatly
> appreciated.

These things do not popup in the test cases of the developer, because 
he/she know the logic of the system and enters test cases accordingly.
How this could happen is a mystery to me too.
All I know is that I entered all invoices and bills.
During the processing of bills there were some rounding problems which 
required me to unpost the invoice.
After having done all bills I went over the reconciliation process.
Then I discovered that transactions in my previous system were "misplaced" 
to "Undeposited Funds" while they should have gone to the a bank account.
However the system does not allow me to reverse "Process Payment".
Bill and payment belong together, but they are not treated that way in the 
system from an end-user point of view.

For example I discover  that a bill amount has to change AFTER I have done 
a process payment.
You cannot only change the amount of the bill, because there is a 
corresponding payment.
Both need to be changed.
This is not problem when the payments hs not been reconciled yet.
If the payment has been reconciled you have to notify the end-user that the 
payment will change to unreconciled.
You still need to link bill to the same set of payments, even if you unpost 
the invoice.

The system has no (easy) way of:
- tracking if a bill has been paid or not.
- which payment have been done for a bill (or invoice)

A very convenient method of handling payment is to show them on the same 
form as the bill.
Each payment is one line under the bill.
For example you are a help desk person and a customer rings they have paid 
a bill at a particular date.
This information is not visible on the bill form at present.
This is a feature that is dearly missing in gnucash.
For exaple if I mistype the payment amount, how can I change the amount 
later on ???
The forms should follow the work flow as much as possible.
Bill/invoice and payment should be on one and the same form, otherwise you 
run into problems.

Regards,

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