Newbie few item questions

[Derek Atkins]

Tuc at Beach House <tuc at tucs-beachin-obx-house.com> writes:

>> Tuc at Beach House <tuc at tucs-beachin-obx-house.com> writes:
>> 
>> > 	1) I started entering information on a Business/Vendor/New Bill
>> > and found I totally stuffed it up. I was able to delete the line items,
>> > but how do I remove the invoice itself? Its unposted with no line items.
>> 
>> You can't.  Just re-use the invoice for your next invoice.
>>
> 	Is this something thats planned for the future, or just a quirk
> that will have to be lived with. 

Unclear...  I /may/ be able to implement a "delete invoice"...  There
aren't too many dependencies involved there.  But it's not on the radar
for you're going to have to live with it for a while.

>> > 	2) When I went to go look at a payment I entered, it seemed to be
>> > showing as a split for 19.20 and 19.20 making a $38.40 payment. However,
>> > I'm fairly sure I put it in as 156.59 without any payment splits. Where /
>> > what / how did this appear?
>> 
>> Payments are posted in FIFO order against the Invoice Owner (Customer
>> or Vendor)..  So if you have multiple invoices posted for a particular
>> customer, it will post a payament against the first invoice (in date
>> order) first.  If you over-pay this invoice, gnucash will create
>> Automatic Payment Forward transactions to "move" the extra money from
>> one invoice to another.
>>
> 	The problem is that I know when I entered it, I entered the first
> ever bill for this vendor correctly, and the payment in full correctly. Then
> I entered the second bill, and the second bill in full correctly. So where
> this 19.20/38.40 issue comes from I don't know. From what you describe I
> can't fix it either, since if I attempt to enter another bill in it will just
> continue the cycle of pre-payments, etc. If I attempt to do so, it'll just
> keep shifting things around. Right now when I do the Business/Bills Due
> Reminder I have actually 2 reminders for 38.40 for this particular vendor,
> but each Vendor Bill was posted, then paid. I do a search for these two
> 38.40, with nothing. If I search for 19.20 I see a split in and out
> of Liabilities:AP for 19.20 on each side (Wash) and then on one payment a
> Funds In of 19.20 and 137.39 to Liabilities:AP and 156.59 to Assets:Current:
> Cash in Wallet. How do I find where this 2nd 38.40 thing is happening?

I have no idea.  I'd have to see a screenshot of your A/R (or A/P)
account, maybe limited by the transactions for this particular vendor.

>> > 	3) To resolve #2, I went into the Cash Account, found the line item
>> > and just deleted it. I went back to the payments for bills, found the bill
>> > and paid the bill in full. NOW I have 2 line items that show in my 
>> > Accounts Payable as "Automatic Payment Forward" for 19.20, another for -19.20,
>> > the original incorrect payment with the check number is showing as -19.20 and
>> > there is an entry for $137.39. But there is nothing about the 156.59 that
>> > I entered... What the? If I do a Vendor search, then show bills, the "paid"
>> > column is not checked. When I go back to the Assets:Current Assets:Cash
>> > in Wallet and look at the payment, it now shows it was split into 19.20,
>> > 137.39 in my "Liabilities:Accts Payable". Why? I didn't split it when I
>> > put it in. Infact I don't know how to split it when I enter it.
>> 
>> I suggest you remove the payment transactions and the Automatic
>> Payment Forward transactions and then repost the payment.
>>
> 	I delete the Auto Pay Forward I found, and the payment, and I
> run the Business/Bills Due, and now it tells me that one bill is due 19.20
> and the other 175.79!

HUH?  A 19.20 Bill Due?   I need to see your A/P for that one.

> 	I go to Business/Vendors/Find Vendor and put in the company name
> . I click the company name and press "Vendor's Bills". There are 2 bills
> not marked paid. The first is the one I keep trying to pay properly, and the
> other is the one that it complains about the 175.79. I click "Process Payment"
> and it seems to autofill the Payment information with 19.20. I change the
> date, I put the 156.59, I put my check number in NUM, I post to 
> Liabilities:AP and Transfer from Assets:Current:Cash in Wallet (I know I
> should be using Checking Account, but its how I want to do it for now..)
> and click OK. There isn't a check next to the paid on my "Search for..." .
> If I go to the Bill Reminder, that invoice now shows 19.20 due, and the other
> one shows 19.20 too. If I try to find a transaction for 19.20, I can't.
> This is my power bill, so I go to Expenses:Utilities:Electric and I see
> my invoices there. I haven't figured out how to get it to tell me the payments
> easily. So I go to the Transaction report for the month the first bill is in.
> Cash In Wallet is right. Accts Payable is right. But it tells me I owe
> 19.20 in the Bill Reminder... HUH?

Notice that 175.79-156.59 == 19.20!   SO... What's going on is that
you're paying 156.59 towards the $175.79 invoice, which leaves an extra
19.20 due.   Or it could be the other way around, where you're applying
the $175.79 payment to the $156.59 invoice, leaving a net amount of.....
you guessed it.... 19.20.

In other words, you're applying the payments in the wrong order.

The Bills Due reminder is showing you the total amount of th Bill.
When you click on one and click Process Payment, it's computing
the amount LEFT due...   That bill already has a partial payment,
so it's computing the remainder for you.

>> I've
>> never been able to reproduce the work-flow that causes a problem
>> with these Payment Forward transactions, but some people have been
>> able to get themselves into a broken situation... 
>>
> 	I think I'm there. :)
>> 
>> Without being able to reproduce the situation I have no idea how it
>> gets into this bogus state..  But..  Removing the payments and the
>> automatic-forwards and repositing the payments seems to solve the
>> problem.
>>
> 	Then when I do a "Bills Due" shouldn't it not appear there?
> And now why is something 2 invoices later showing differences? I just
> want a report to tell me everything posting to a vendor, maybe I can
> find out then.

Maybe...  It will show in Bills Due if the LOT in A/P is not balanced
to zero...

>> > 	4) Is there a way to print a report that would be 
>> >
>> > VENDOR	
>> >
>> > Date	Reference	Type	Amount
>> >
>> > 	So I can see in one place all the bills and associated payments
>> > for each vendor? 
>> 
>> Um, have you tried the Vendor Report?  Reports -> Business -> Vendor Report
>>
> 	No, but I just did. I change the "From" and "To" to be 12/1/05
> and 12/31/05 respectively, I select my account (The power company) and
> when I apply I get "An error occurred while running the report".

What's printed on your terminal?  (You ARE running gnucash from a terminal,
right???)

> 	I'd like to get a complete report, by EVERY vendor.

Well, there's the aging report, but that's not quite the same,
either.

> 	But if I change the report to be 1/1/05 to today, and run it, I
> get 4 bills, 4 matching payments, a total due of 0.00, but a 
> 31-60 days receivable of 19.20 and a 91+ days of -19.20 .

You've got an extra Auto Forward transaction in there.   You should
go clear out your AP and post the payments in the correct order.

>> > 	5) Speaking of reports, unfortunately I'm not able to program
>> > in the report language... Is there anyone who's made an "addition pack"
>> > of reports possibly?
>> 
>> All reports that have been created have been incorporated into GnuCash
>> and shipped.  Is there a report you think you need that GnuCash doesn't
>> already have?
>>
> 	I wanted a report like the Reports/Business/Vendor but I wanted
> all the split information of the accounts it was posted to also. I
> was hoping I'd find where these 19.20s are coming from if my bills
> and payments match exactly.

"All the split information?"  The only split information is the Auto
Payment transactions which in general can be ignored, except in the
cases where they cause problems.   There's no reason a customer
should see that information.

> 	This whole 19.20.. I put the bill in for $X, I payed the bill for
> $X. I put the next bill in for $Y, I paid it for $Y. I put the next in
> as $Z, etc. Where this 19.20 stuff is coming from I don't know. 

Are you sure?  See above.

>> But
>> yes, GnuCash is going to try to auto-balance stuff for you.  The
>> business features in particular are going to migrate the payments
>> to make sure you can pay multiple invoices with a single payment.
>>
> 	I'd rather I be asked about it. But in this case it should have
> never needed to do it since I put in the bill, and paid it, put the next
> in, paid it. Its not like I put one bill in, then told it I paid a 
> different one, then put that invoice in, and then tried to pay the first
> one. I also have an issue that it might autobalance differently that
> we do it. I had a recent time where I paid a vendor bill only 1/2, then
> we got the next one and paid it in full. With the auto balance wouldn't
> it have paid the rest of the previous bill and shorted this one? I
> wanted to keep that 1/2 a bill open and aging because of an issue we
> had with the vendor on the bill. If I went back to look at it it would
> have probably told me I paid it with a check that I didn't. So I really
> rather apply payments to what I want, not how it wants. I do want it to
> tell me "Hey, you have $G available to you from overpaying another bill,
> do you want to use it here" or "Hey, I have another invoice that needs
> payment, do you want that one included or leave it out of it." I guess
> I'm coming down to I don't want auto-balance. I want to tell it what
> payment applies to what bills, and let me worry about shorts/overs.
>> 
>> In 1.8 you cannot pay an invoice directly (but you can in 1.9).
>> 
> 	AH. :) Ok.
>
> 	Any idea when 1.9 will be in production ? I'd probably have to
> compile it apart from FreeBSD ports, they have random freezes on
> upgrading software.

1.9 will never be in production..  It's a test release.  2.0 will
be the production (stable) version....  Hopefully around May.
See http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Release_Schedule

> 			Thanks, Tuc

-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