gnucash & sales tax

[Beth Leonard]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 10:38:21AM -0400, Paul Tomas wrote:
> Hello Beth - please excuse me for contacting you directly, but
> I found your response to a gnucash question on readlist.com
> and don't know how to use that channel to follow-up.

For future reference, the list is gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Every message sent to it has the trailing tag:
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user at gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user

so you should be able to subscribe/watch from there.

> The original
> question was titled "Sales Tax Account Setup", and your reply
> (Feb 1) suggested making a split, such as:
> 
> Assets:Bank Account $26.65
> Income:Sales:Taxable $20
> Liabilities:Accounts Payable:Sales Tax $1.65
> Income:Shipping $5
> 
> For the example case of a $20 sale + 1.65 sales tax + $5 shipping.
> 
> I understand the breakdown you provided - what I don't get is what
> actions in gnucash you would use to accomplish that...ie. Do
> you use Business->Customer-Invoice to generate the invoice? When I
> try that, it only lets me target an income account. So if I use
> your breakdown above, I would only be able to assign $20 to the
> invoice.

When I'm selling products to anonymous people at a booth, I
just do it by hand with a split -- I'm paid right then and I
don't need to worry about accounts receivable.  If you do this
often, then the easiest way is to use the "duplicate transaction"
button from an older example you entered by hand once.

To do it using the business invoice features, (this is what
you do when someone is going to pay you in the future)
first set up a tax table (Business->Tax Table Editor) 

The tax table editor lets you specify that (for example)
sales taxes go to "Liabilities:Accounts Payable: Sales Tax
In your invoice, toggle which items are taxable.  The invoice posts
the splits correctly with the tax portion of the invoice 
going to a liability account and the income:sales for the item
going to the income account.

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

> Or do you do this "by hand" - ie. Don't use the invoice action,
> but rather manage accounts receivable ?
> 
> I've searched on google, yahoo etc. for a simple, complete
> (end-to-end) example of how this apparently common case would
> be handled in gnucash, but haven't found anything yet.
> 
> As you've guessed, I'm new to gnucash & accounting in general...
> 
> Your help would be most appreciated. If you would rather that I post
> this question in a public forum, I'm more than willing to do so - I
> would just need a link to go to.
> 
> Many thanks,
> Paul
> 
> 
>