accounts payable

[Derek Atkins]

Jon Lapham <lapham at extracta.com.br> writes:

> Using the integrated A/P system in GnuCash:

I would have started with A/R, but most of the answers are the same.

> Firstly, the system is quite nice, but let me bounce some
> ideas/questions off everyone to make sure I'm fully understanding.
> 
> A "vendor" is a company that sells you products or services.

Or an individual, but yes.

> A "bill" is fairly straightforward, it is the physical bill you
> receive from a vendor.

Yep.

> A "job" is a grouping mechanism which allows you to related various
> bills together.  For example, if your company is working on 2
> contracts, you may want to group all A/P to one of the two contracts.

Well, note that there are different types of jobs.  There are "vendor
jobs" and "customer jobs".  One way to think about a "vendor job" would
be a Purchase Order (although that's note quite correct, because it
doesn't have the limitations or checks of a PO).  Personally I never
use vendor jobs, but some people might find them useful.

"customer jobs" are certainly related to multiple contracts for the
same customer.

> A "chargeback project" is another grouping mechanism which allows you
> to know which customer to charge for a bill.  For example, if you go
> on a business trip, you can charge a particular customer for the
> expense using a chargeback.

Correct, a chargeback project is a customer (and optional "customer
job") to charge back the expenses.

> What is the difference between a job and a chargeback project?  Are
> they usually the same thing?  Maybe a job could involve multiple
> customers, whereas a chargeback can only involve one?

They are the same thing, except the top-level job is the "vendor job"
and the chargeback project is the "customer job".  A job cannot
involve multiple customers, it is necessarily a one-to-many contruct
-- one customer can have multiple jobs, but each job has only a single
customer (replace "customer" with "vendor" in that statement for
"vendor jobs").

> It seems that you do not *have* to specify a Job or Chargeback
> Project, correct?  Could this cause problems later to leave either of
> these items blank in a bill?

Correct, you do not have to specify a job or chargeback.  This does
not cause any problems.

> What is the recommended way to bill something from which there is no
> obvious job and/or chargeback project?  For example, the purchasing of
> paper products for the office.  You could create a Job, maybe called
> "Office Supplies", or simply leave the Job empty?  The "chargeback"
> would go to the company itself, I guess?

What do you mean by this?  Note that GnuCash does not have an
inventory system, but you CAN track expenses through the billing
process.  For example, you would keep track of the "Office Supplies"
by having a line item of:

        Paper   Expenses:Office Supplies        ....

You can safely leave the job empty if the vendor has no jobs.
You can safely leave the chargeback empty if the expenses are
not directly related to some customer.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available