Custom Transaction Report with Balance

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Jason Dunham <jwdunham at gmail.com> writes:

> OK, so here's my use case:  I am using GnuCash to manage a vacation house
> shared by three families.  Each month or quarter, the co-owners need to pay
> their share of the mortgage, utilities and taxes, and get credit for any rent
> earned, or supplies purchased, or vendors paid.  The invoice isn't really
> interesting to the co-owners, because it only shows half the story: the line
> items for the charges.  Also, the money just keeps flowing, so there isn't
> really any need to "pay the invoice", or to associate specific payments with
> specific invoices. The owners just need to keep putting money in or
> (occasionally) taking it out, and it needs to be easy to generate a report
> telling them their balance. Something that looks a lot like a credit card or
> bank statement would be perfect.
>
> Then there is the Customer Report, but that only details the other half of the
> story, the payments made, and if there are other account credits, I have to
> enter them as "customer payments" or else they won't get picked up in this
> report, and Accounts Receivable would no longer match the Customer Report
> balance due. I have to say that this part is tedious and makes me feel like
> this is the wrong approach. So maybe I should abandon the use of invoices and
> customer reports and focus on creating a new report which acts like a bank
> statement.  
>
> There are also equity accounts for the partners, but this is just 100%
> operational funds, so the equity rarely changes.
>
> As an example, I bought a ladder at the hardware store with the house account,
> didn't even involve my personal funds. The ladder was too small, so I took it
> back. Since it happened to be bought with a debit card, they gave me cash
> back.  I figured I would just keep the cash and give the money back to the
> house by increasing my accounts receivable, and then it would be tallied on my
> account. But the only way I can find to do this is to generate a new invoice
> "charging" myself for the cash received.
>
> So GC is on the whole really terrific, and the free part is awesome too, so
> I'm fine with using invoices if that's the only way to get this done, but I
> hope I've explained how it seems tangential to what I'm using it for.   And I
> do need to find a way to make it easy, because I want the other owners to take
> turns at playing accountant and they will mock me if it's hopelessly complex.
>
> Now when we happen to rent the place out, then the invoice system will be much
> more useful, and I think it does what I need right out of the box.
>
> I'm sorry for boring you all with my situation, but otherwise I can't explain
> how I am using the features. Again, any suggestions are appreciated.

I'm thinking that you probably shouldn't be using the business features
for this.  It also means you will probably need to write a custom
report, unless the transaction report can be optioned into doing what
you want.  (I don't know if it can).

Good Luck,

-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