how to register an advance payment ?

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 03:07:06PM +0200, Bob Alexander wrote:
> I bought a piece of funiture for 1000 euros and as it needs to be custom
> built the carpenter asked for an advance payment of 300 which I payed with
> my credit card.
> 
> I therefore registered in gnucash a charge to my credit card of 300 with a
> transfer on my "house" expense income.
> 
> So far so good, but what I would like to be able to track is that in some
> time I will have to pay for another 700 and that the overall cost of that
> good is 1000.
> 
> How would you go about it ?

This comes up inmy business from time to time. I have an asset account
called Pre-Paid Expenses/Deposits. When I make the pre-payment, it is
a credit to checking and a debit to that asset account. Then when I
make the final payment, I credit checking for the balance, credit
Pre-Paid Expenses for the pre-paid amount and debit the appropriate
expense account for the total cost of the item. In the case of
purchasing an asset, though, I would debit the account for fixed
assets, but that's another issue. 

Hope that helps, and I hope I got my cr/dr's right.

A
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