Generate Invoice and track down payment for work?

[Maf. King]

On Thursday 19 February 2009 23:15:05 Mark S wrote:
> 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

Hi Mark,

OK, I understand your motivation now.  However, I would say that your 
description above would in effect create 2 invoices for the same block of 
work, which is probably going to get confusing to accountants/tax men etc.

I think that the UK approach to this is to _not_ generate a proper invoice for 
the 50%, but to use a "pro-forma", record the payment in the usual way in GC, 
so that your customer goes into credit.  as you create proper invoices for 
your time spent on the project, the GC report will show you the credit 
balance remaining.

I think that you will still need to manually show this on the invoices you 
create, though.

HTH
Maf.