Accounting periods problem

[Wahur]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Elizabeth Dodd <edodd at billiau.net> wrote:

> You are apparently to use accrual accounting.
> In our jurisdiction, some people are on accrual accounting and some are on
> cash basis accounting (which you were using).
>
> If it is accrual accounting, it goes in on the month the bill gets to you
> /
> the month it refers to
> not the month you pay it.
>
> You just have to adjust your dates to correspond to the Tax requirements,
> not
> to put in as date_paid.
>
> No accounting package I can imagine would do this automatically - it is a
> case
> of ensuring you enter for correct time period.
>
> Liz
>

Nope. There are actually four time items to be recorde for every
invoice/bill.
Issue date, due date, payment date (those may be multiple), and accounting
period the document belongs to.
As I understand it, issue date should not determine accounting period, at
least not always.
Like in my example - my February phone bill (that should be accounted as
February cost) was issued in March, so Gnucash considers it automatically a
March cost.
Of course, I might overcome this problem by saying that this bill was issued
in February 29, not someday in March, but this would be poor workaround that
just creates inconsistency between program data and paper trail.
And i am quite sure that many accounting programs let you do that (at least
thats what my auditor said).

Wahur