Possible problem with splits

[Beth Leonard]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 07:25:45PM -0500, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> It really will help if we consider JUST making a bank deposit. Describe 
> what YOU think you should be doing and what you should be seeing if at 
> the end of the day at your business somebody took to the bank and 
> deposited the 25 checks which came in that day. For all sorts of things 
> (will be split to different accounts). What do you expect to see when 
> looking at the account "bank account" and what do you expect to see in 
> each of the N accounts affected by the split? What do you (would the 
> business person) want to see?

When I take our checks to the bank at the end of the month (about 40 of
them) I write "deposit - tutoring income $NNN, rest video income."
The splits go to: 
Income:tutoring
Income:sales:non-taxable sales
Income:sales:taxable sales
Income:shipping
Liabilities:sales taxes

I don't write memos on the splits.

Some of the individual checks that made up those totals have their
dollar amounts split over several accounts.  I work that out
before I deposit the checks.

When I look at any of those accounts I see regular deposits.  It's
the running total dollar amount I care about; I created the accounts
themselves with the granularity I need.

If I'm doing work in advance I create an invoice and post it.
When I mark the invoice as "paid" it does the right thing and puts
the money in my bank account -- I'd leave that check out of the total
in the split above.  (I don't need to invoice very often for my
business.)

In short, GnuCash is working just fine for our small businesses.  
Either services were paid for at the time they were rendered
(so I don't care who wrote what check later, it's just a total
dollar amount) or they were invoiced and the splits get taken
care of through the business features of GnuCash.

--Beth 
Beth Leonard
http://www.LeonardFamilyVideos.com