Imported invoices and other problems...

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

defaria <Andrew at DeFaria.com> writes:

> Looking into it I see one account, my Invoices account from Quicken H&B
> 2009, is at like negative 1/2 a million! Obviously this is wrong.  Looking
> at the Invoices account, every transaction imported merely reduces the
> balance by the transaction amount. IOW it just goes negative. This Invoices
> account is listed as a Bank account type. Should it be a "Bank" account
> type? Apparently these were never converted properly into invoices. How
> would I convert them?

There is no way to import an invoice.

> In trying to create a new Invoice I also wanted to create a new Job. When
> doing so GnuCash apparently aborts - the window goes away. Started up
> gnucash from a terminal and tried just Business: New Job. It worked. Tried
> to create a new job from the Find Job screen. Created a dummy job. Now I'd
> like to delete it. How? Found new dummy job. Selected inactive. Segmentation
> fault! Ugh! Seems buggy to me!

What version of GnuCash are you using?
You're absolutely right that GnuCash shouldn't crash.  I'm sorry it
is crashing for you.  If you're running 2.2.9 can you file a bug report
on this so we can make sure we don't lose the problem?

> OK, not terms. In creating an invoice there is a terms drop down. All that's
> there is "None". How do I set tha that to something other than "None". I
> looked around but could find nothing about Terms.

Business -> Billing Terms Editor

> OK, on to the accounting issues/questions. First off, what's an Income
> account? In Quicken H&B my Invoices account was of type Invoice. Invoices
> could be created there as well as payments processed, etc. When a payment
> was received and I entered a payment the proceeds would be deposited into my
> business checking account by means of a transfer.

An Income Account is exactly what it says, a way to account for Income.
It lets you classify your income as things like Sales, Reimbursement,
etc.  When you create and post an invoice you get a transaction from
Income -> A/R.  When you process the payment you get a transaction
from A/R -> Checking.

> Here I'm asked for an Income account. My business checking account is not
> listed as an Income account. So I think "From what I've heard this GnuCash
> seems to make an account per category when compared to Quicken". I used to
> categories this income as "Consulting" and lo and behold there is a
> Consulting account listed in the drop down. So I select it.

Yes, Quicken "Categories" map to GnuCash Income/Expense accounts.

> When I go to "Post" this invoice it asks for a Post to Account and all I see
> there is "Wallet". Well I don't post to my wallet account but the only other
> option is to create a new account and the only account type is
> "A/Receivable". So I create a new account and name it Invoices. To my
> surprise it works! Now I  have two accounts, both named Invoices, one a bank
> account and one an A/Receivable account. Am I supposed to "post" invoices to
> "Invoices" a "A/Receivable" account and then enter yet another transaction
> to get the money out of the Invoices account and deposited into my Business
> checking account?

Yes...

> Oh, OK, just tried a Process Payment and it seems to address these issues. I
> can enter the Customer, Invoice, etc. It has a Post To account as well as a
> Transfer Account.
>
> Sorry for all the confusion. As expected this will take some time to get
> used to. Please be gentle and patient with me. I'll come around -
> eventually!

Have you read the documentation?  I highly recommend it.

-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
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available