accounts payable take 1

[Derek Atkins]

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

> First stab at the accounts payable documentation:
> http://www.jandr.org/temp/gnucashdocs/bus_ap1.html
> 
> Currently, there is no examples section, which I would like to add
> later.  Oh, Derek, I rearranged the chapter so the AR is before AP.
> The reason I started with AP is because it came first in the old
> chapter ordering.  :)  (is there any logic associated with AR before
> AP?  Just curious).

The only reason I would put AR before AP is that I suspect more people
are concerned with "how do I bill my customers" than "how do I keep
track of payables".  Perhaps that's just me -- I hardly use the AP
system myself but I use AR extensively.

> Questions:
> 
> Should I put screenshots of the applications in each section?  I'm
> okay with doing that, but the section is going to become VERY long
> with all the screenshots because some of the AP windows are very long.

Well, you could break the section into sub-sections?  I think screen
shots are always a good idea.

> Section 11.4.4
> What does "Invoice Info - Date Opened" refer to in the New Bill
> window? Is it the date the invoice was created (probably while still
> in the vendor's hands), or the date you receive the invoice from the
> vendor?

Uh, any of the above?  It has a clearer meaning for customer invoices.
(Customer and Vendor invoices share 95% of their code, so there are
some things that might not make complete sense in both contexts).
Suffice it to say that the "opened date" of a vendor bill isn't used
for anything except searches.

> Section 11.4.5
> What does "Owner Info - Billing ID" refer to in the New Vendor Job
> window?  I thought a Billing ID was bill specific, so how can you
> specify a Billing ID for a Vendor Job which may have many bills
> associated?

This is a Billing Reference ID for all bills associated with this job.
Again, this sort of falls out of the Customer Invoice (see, this is
why you should have done AR first ;)

Basically, the "Billing ID" is something that get's printed on the
invoice to tie multiple invoices together, or provide some information
to the vendor (or customer) for their records.

The idea is that it's useful to have an ID that you create and an ID
that they create, so that you can search on either.

-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