General questions

Beth Leonard beth at oasis.slimy.com
Sat Apr 30 19:11:54 EDT 2005


On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 05:57:17PM +0100, Ian Leonard wrote:
> 1. To enter expenses with VAT, I use a split transaction as suggested by 
> someone on the list a while ago. It works but it is a pain to do. When I 
> enter an invoice I can enter a tax code and it does the split 
> automatically. Can I do a similar thing when entering expenses? I see 
> there is tax information under Edit -> Tax options but I don't 
> understand what this does.

Edit -> Tax options won't solve your problem, and as currently
implemented seems to be useful primarily for the US.  (But I don't
know all the tax codes, perhaps some of those relate to other
countries' taxes.)

For your case I think what you need to do is to use the business
menu to add vendors for your expenses.  It's covered in section
13 of the Tutorial and Concepts guide, also located here:
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v1.8/C/gnucash-guide/chapter13.html
If you click the "tax included" box for the line-items of your
bill, it will create the split for you when you enter the total
amount charged by your vendor.

Also note that when using the business features to enter your
expenses, you'll have to use the "process payment" button to 
make your payments (instead of just a transfer transaction
from the checking account), or else your bills will show up as unpaid.

[For completeness of the answer:]
Edit -> Tax options is for assigning tax related accounts a particular
line-item on the income tax forms.  You can then export
the total of the transactions in those accounts to a file format
known as ".txf" for tax exchange file.  That file format can be
read by programs such as Turbo Tax, so you don't have to enter
all the information that gnucash totals up for you manually into
your tax program.

To export this .txf file, go to 
Reports -> Tax Report/TXF export -> Export Button

> 2. When I 'print' an invoice, it actually puts in it's own window. I can 
> then select the Invoice template to get the style I want. Is there away 
> of specifying a default so I don't have to keep doing it? It's not that 
> I have loads of invoices, quite the reverse, I do so few I forget what I 
> need to do.

I don't think so.  Perhaps someone else knows how.

> 3. When I actually 'print' the invoice I actually save it as postscript 
> and the use ps2pdf to produce a pdf file. Can I automate this process?

I believe this is possible, but some one else will have to answer
as I don't have a printer attached to this computer.  If you are
producing a pdf file, it does look like there is an option to go
directly to a .pdf file by selecting
File->Print->Select Printer Name:->PDF Writer
There is a comment saying "BETA" so certainly double-check the output
before mailing it to your customers.

--Beth 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+                             Beth Leonard                          +
+       O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave              +
+       O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?        +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


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