Process vendor payments and negative values

[Derek Atkins]

Graham Leggett <minfrin at sharp.fm> writes:

> Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>>>As a result, my payable aging looks like this:
>>>
>>>30 days: R80.30
>>>60 days: R0.00
>>>90 days: R0.0
>>>120 days+: R-80.30
>> Wait, how did you get it into this state?  When you posted the R80.30
>> 30 days ago it should have balanced into the R-80.30 -- unless you
>> adjusted the payment AFTER you posted the invoice.
>
> The only thing that I can think of was that the invoices and payments
> were not raised in date order, sometimes two payments were processed,
> the newest first. Also, a credit was passed on the particular bill,
> and the payments didn't take into account the credit until a month or
> two later.

I dont understand what you mean here.  Just because you process payments
in reverse order shouldn't mean anything.  So long as you don't change
the posted invoices then the payments will eventually add up.  For example:

Jan 1 invoice $100
Feb 1 invoice $150
Feb 15 payment -$150
Feb 20 payment -$100

This should all add up just fine.  The $150 will apply $100 to the
Jan 1 invoice and $50 to the Feb 1 invoice.  Then the Feb 20 payment
will apply the remaining $100 to the Feb 1 invoice.

So, unless you changed any values after-the-fact, it should be just
fine.

Hmm, now that I think about it...  It _might_ cause a problem if you:
post invoice, apply payment (such that invoice is paid), then unpost
the invoice, reduce its amount, and then repost it.  I _think_ this is
handled correctly, but it might not be.

>>>Is there same way of clearing off this old negative amount? I'd rather
>>>not delete all the payments and then reraise them, as the accounts
>>>have been reconciled.
>
>> Unpost and repost the 80.30 from 30 days ago to get it to see the
>> adjusted -80.30 from 120 days ago...
>
> There is no 80.30 amount. The payments, which came off by debit order,
> did not match the invoices. This was then fixed down the line through
> an under debit on the debit order, but Gnucash hasn't seemed to like
> it.

Sure there is!  Check your A/R account.  There is 80.30 from 30 days
ago and 80.30 from 120+ days ago.

> It looks like it is ignoring the negative amount 120 days ago,
> overallocating the current payment to the most recent payment in 30
> days, so the 120 days old negative amount sticks around while the
> allocation is applied to the latest invoice.

It shouldn't do this, unless somehow the lot marking the invoice got
into a state where it's an "overpaid" invoice but didn't self-correct
itself by splitting off the over-payment into a new lot.  However,
this case shouldn't ever happen.  Every post (invoice and payment)
should auto-balance...  UNLESS you hand-modified the payment
transaction.

> Does Gnucash take negative amounts into consideration when allocating
> payments to accounts payable?

What is a "negative amount"?  There are "invoices" and there are
"payments".  You cannot have a "negative invoice" nor can you have a
"negative payment".  Also, you can only have one "invoice" per lot.
So, if you somehow got an invoice+payment lot out of balance by, say,
hand-modifying a payment transaction, that could easily have caused
this problem.  But I don't know what you mean by the above.

> Regards,
> Graham

-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