Process Payment Feature Request

[Keith A. Milner]

On Friday 01 February 2008 13:21:42 Josh Trutwin wrote:
> Hmm - I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here - I was
> hoping that the invoice number could be added to the default text
> that gets put in the Transfer Account description - for me that's the
> checking account.  When I process a payment the description only
> shows the company name, if gnucash is able to determine the invoices
> that get marked as paid it would be useful to also have that in the
> register.

I'm assuming you mean on the "Find Invoice" dialogue.

On this dialogue Gnucash does, indeed, know that an invoice has been paid, but 
it doesn't know which transaction(s) caused this condition.

As discussed, Gnucash works on a FIFO basis. Consider the scenario where you 
have three invoices as follows:

INV #1 $200
INV #2 $100
INV #3 $300

(listed in data order, earliest first)

If you select INV #2 and pay $100 to clear it, INV #2 will still be shown as 
unpaid, this payment isn't ever marked in a way that links it to INV #2. If 
you could show "Invoices Due" it would look like this:

INV #1 $100 due
INV #2 $100 due
INV #3 $300 due

In other words, the payment goes to the chonologically first invoice.

If you then paid another $300, apparently on INV #3, it would actually clear 
the first two invoices:

INV #1 $0 paid in full
INV #2 $0 paid in full
INV #3 $200 due

I believe the "Find Invoice" dialogue view is calculated on the fly by Gnucash 
stepping through the invoices starting from ealiest to last, cumulatively 
adding them together and comparing them against the payment total. This is 
done in real time.

I'm sure it's technically possible to do this in the register view, but it 
would be very difficult and exceedingly slow. I suspect it would be 
impractical.

On a side issues, what I have described above is my understanding and 
experience of how Gnucash handles payments. I may not be entirely correct. I 
have seen, on several occasions, situations where there are gaps in 
the "paid" status in the invoice list which shouldn't exist if Gnucash 
performs  strictly as I have described.

I have also seen it where the total of the outstanding bills is more than the 
amount outstanding on the account. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a 
peculiarity caused by me doing something I shouldn't have.

Cheers,

-- 
Keith A. Milner