invoice, cost of goods sold, process payment question

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

John Griessen <john_g at cibolo.com> writes:

> Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>> what exactly are you trying to do here? Do you have expense accounts
>> created for COGS?
> Yes, I have an account Expenses:COGS.   It already exists.
>
> When editing an invoice, the invoice entries column "Income Account" will not 
> accept typing in Expenses:COGS, it just disappears after you try.

Right, because a Customer Invoice can only talk about Income and
Assets.  The accounts on Invoices are only half the transaction (the
other half is A/R).  You cannot control both debits and credits on the
Invoice.  That's why you can't touch an Expense account; it would
enter the wrong amount.

This is a feature. :)

> are you trying to tie each invoice to the COGS
>> associated with it?
> Not necessary...would be nice.
>
> or are you accruing an inventory asset for COGS
> Yes, when I take half a sheet of plastic from inventory, I want to
> move the inventory-valued amount, (the cost),
> to expense, COGS, and thus have inventory decrease.  I was thinking
> this could happen when editing an invoice, but I'm not sure this is possible.

It is not possible.  I'll repeat again: Gnucash Does Not Support
Inventory.

> and
>> trying to debit that asset with each sale?
> I was thinking of crediting the asset:inventory, (decreasing it) at the time of 
> building assemblies from it, so I could call that WIP, work in process, and then 
> be able to adjust for any loss or scrap at that stage.
>
> Maybe I should only use account COGS when the thing sold is unmodified, or 
> modified very little, such as in cutting piece off a length of some material,
> and then COGS would be updated when a payment is processsed?  Ultimately, I want 
> a way to record COGS when a sales invoice is created or a WIP assembly is made.
>
> Perhaps I will need to use other tools, but for now, I would like to find some 
> manual way to get my inventory back to zero on paper
> after occasionally owning some to do
> service jobs.  At the same time is when I imagine handling the higher sell price
> for material even though I see no inventory item units in Gnucash, just money 
> units.  So far, I just see dropping using an account Expenses:COGS and just 
> working up a report that summarizes that idea for a month.

You can use your Asset:Inventory account instead of an Income Account;
this would offset the Asset and not increase your Income, but it also
(somewhat) hides the actual COGS.

Eventually, once GnuCash gets real inventory support, it should
include conta-splits to reduce Inventory, increase Expense:COGS, and
increase Income:Sales all from one "invoice entry" (line item).  But
at this point gnucash does not support inventory.

-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