Invoice numbering

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

"Maf. King" <maf at chilwell.net> writes:

> Hi Derek,
>
> Hmm, although I see your logic, that doesn't make sense to me - for vendor 
> reporting in GC, at least.
>
> I write an invoice, and sure, the InvoiceID is my number, and the billing ref 
> is their PO number - I get that, use GC that way, and the auto-increment 
> counter works well.

* nods *

> BUT, If I enter a bill, then (possibly my preference, I accept) I want to see 
> their invoice No in the vendor report "reference" column.  I guess it goes 
> back to the phone conversation of "why haven't you paid our bill no 123?" I 
> alluded to earlier.  The bill _is_ identified by their number, not my number. 
> ( i think that this "principle of reference" is laid down by UK tax rules, 
> YMMV etc.)

Ahh, but see, what happens when you have bill #123 from vendor A and then
bill #123 from vendor B?  If you're just looking for bill #123 you need
more information to uniquely identify the bill.

> Also, at least in my business, Purchase Orders don't always map 1:1 to bills 
> (or invoices either, for that matter!)   so to auto-increment a "PO number" 
> doesn't seem sensible to me, as the "unique" ref. no. isn't always unique -  
> a single invoice (or bill) may cover several POs or only a partial payment of 
> a large PO.

GnuCash has no real support for creating Purchase Orders.  That work
was started (GncOrder) but never completed.  Vendor Bills are not
Purchase Orders and should not be treated as such (even if I suppose
you could force it if you want).

> Cheers,
> Maf.

-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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