Settling an account

[Maf. King]

On Tuesday 06 Nov 2007, Karl Grant wrote:
> Two quick questions:
> How can I record / reconcile a single lodgment to an account that is made
> up of many different payments from different customers. I know it's easy
> enough when it's just one customer, i.e. record a payment and the splits
> are made automatically in the Assets:Accounts Receivable. However,
> processing payments from different customers end up as different
> transactions in the current account, but they need to be reconciled against
> one lodgment. I think I need a way to change or move these transactions
> into splits.
>

Hi,

I don't think that GC will do this for you.  I can suggest that you use an 
intermediate account, into which the invoice payments are made, and then you 
do your lodgement from this account into your bank.

ie:  
Customer1  $300   -> asset:foobar
Customer2  $500  -> asset:foobar
then
$800 asset:foobar --> asset:bank

> Secondly, how can I settle an account. I.e. a customer has paid the
> majority of an invoice, neglecting the cents and I want to consider this
> settled.
>

I dealt with something similar today, with a customer who paid by 
international transfer, and the bank took a "stealth" fee off the credit.  
(The customer paid the full sum, but the bank just credited £6 less (the 
fee), and I had to wait for a letter from the bank telling me why things 
didn't add up - followed by having to apologise to the customer for asking 
for more payment... </rant>)

What I did was the following: (IANAA, but it seems to work ok)

1.  Process the payment for the full invoice value
2. Go to the bank account and add a split to expenses:bank fee to "divert" 
some of the funds into an expense account, reducing the sum deposited in 
checking

I guess that you could have some sort of "expense:written-off-cents" account, 
which may work for you.

HTH,
Maf.