Custom Transaction Report with Balance

[Jason Dunham]

I think I came to a similar conclusion as I was writing my email.
 Describing all the problems made me think it was the wrong approach.  I
will work on the custom report and the list will probably hear from me when
I get stuck.

Thanks for the feedback,
Jason

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> 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
>