Accounting periods problem

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Wahur <vahur.lokk at gmail.com> writes:

> Dear friends!
> I guess I must be explaining something in a completely wrong way, cause your
> answers completely miss the point of my question. Maybe its my language - I
> am not a native English-speaker. So I am very sorry for confusion.
> I do use accrual accounting, for sure, so payment date is completely
> irrelevant to my question. Having a degree in finance I also have no problem
> figuring out transactions I need. All the accounts have been set up just
> fine and they have been used successfully for a year.
>
> Lets try once more.
> Bill should be identified by two data items - here in Estonia we use usually
> 'Issue date' and number (number alone is not enough cause documents from
> different issuers might match). Using Issue date is also convenient in case
> i need to compare paper trail with electronic record - I can just look at
> the bill and find it by the issue date.
> So I need to record it somehow.
> When I enter a bill in Gnucash, I post it to 'Issue date'. Right or wrong,
> but currently it seems to me its the only way.
> When I do that, many of my bills get accounted in a wrong month, because
> they are issued during the next month.
>
> So my question is - if there is a way in gnucash to record a bill so it
> appears on a correct issue date AND still have it accounted in a correct
> accounting period.

No.

Using a regular transaction you only have one date.  Using the
business billing system you have two.  However, NONE of them are
"period".  The period is always implied by the 'post date' or 'issue
date'.

Either:

a) the issue date == period or
b) you should back-date the transaction so that the 'post date'
   implies the period.

Even in the billing system you can record the issue date and due date,
but again, not the period.

I don't know about Estonia, but here in the US I think that the
bill issue date implies the period.  If I get a bill from the phone
company dated January 7th, due Feb 6th, for services rendered in
December, this would still apply to January, not December..  The fact
that I pay it in February is irrelevant.

If in Estonia the bill issues Jan 7th needs to apply to December,
then you're going to have to record the bill as issued in December.

> Wahur

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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