Generate Invoice and track down payment for work?

[Mark S]

Let me try and explain the scenario a bit more.

I have created an estimate for a project which is all time-based 
($/hour) (lets say $500).

I am requesting 50% of the estimated value up front ($250). I would like 
to generate an invoice for this $250.

As I perform the work, I want to record the hours worked on the project 
and generate monthly invoices. When the invoice generates I want to be 
able to apply the credit to the invoice (so if my first invoice is for 
$100, the customer would net owe me nothing and still have a credit of 
$150. If my second invoice is for $200 the customer would use up the 
rest of the prepayment credit and owe me $50).

I would rather not manually track the remaining credit and try and apply 
discounts on individual invoices if I can help it.

Hopefully that provides enough detail to see if GnuCash can help.

Thanks for your ideas so far!
-Mark

Maf. King wrote:
> On Thursday 19 February 2009 06:34:24 Mark S wrote:
>   
>> I use GnuCash to track my small business.
>>
>> I have a customer where I am requesting 50% of the estimated cost down
>> up front.
>>
>> Is there a way (and, if so, what is it) to generate an invoice for the
>> 50% down, record the income, but then be able to reduce the future
>> invoices until this amount has been used up?
>>
>> Thank you.
>> -Mark
>>     
>
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> It seems to me that you have this conceptually wrong.  I'm in the UK, and this 
> is how I handle that situation.  YMMV if you are elsewhere.
>
> There is a choice - either generate 2 invoices of 50% with differing payment 
> terms (what I tend to do - depends on the customer's wishes), or generate 1 
> invoice, requesting 2 payments.
>
> It should be fairly obvious that GC will handle the former quite happily.  
> With the latter, you can allocate a partial payment in the "process payment" 
> box, and GC will track the outstanding balance for you.
>
> I don't really understand what you mean about "reducing future invoices" - 
> unless you expect the customer might end up overpaying, in which case GC will 
> keep track of a "payment forward" into the future.
>
> HTH,
> Maf.
>
>
>