One customer paying for another customer invoice?

[Pablo Francesca]

Another proper way of doing it, although gc doesn't handle it well is to essentially create a debit memo.

Here is what I wrote last month:

"Well it looks like this problem is simpler than I had envisioned. 
Ideally I would like the customer report to list "Debit Memo" under the 
Type column. This appears to be impossible without editing the xml file 
(a posted invoice cannot be edited and it appears any invoice not 
created via New Invoice dialogue wont report properly).

However, 
even if the Type column does not indicate Debit Memo, this is still okay
 as long as the reporting is not broken and income is not inflated.

Well
 since those are my parameters, this can be done quite easily, just 
create a new invoice, note the memo field as debit memo and make the 
Income Account account a non-Income account. (Assets: Undeposited 
Funds).

Does this solve my problem? Yes, did it leave me 
temporarily confused? Yes.

This explanation is just for any other
 people whose brains get stuck like mine.  When you create an invoice it
 appears the debit part of the accounting transaction is handled at the 
end when the Question dialog pops up.  It is that field that determines 
what account is debited.  This explains why it is limited by default to 
A/R.  For some reason I had always assumed that this debit was taking 
place immediately after I filled out the New Invoice dialog.  The credit
 part of the transaction is handled by the account listed in the Income 
Account.  This explains why it allows you more freedom is assigning this
 credit entry.  Again I had always ignorantly assumed that this was 
handled by some process hidden from the user.

So in conclusion, 
creating an invoice does not automatically have any effect on income 
reporting, it will only effect income reporting if it is actually 
assigned to an Income account via the Income Account field."

So you need to create a Debit Memo for the paying customer and a credit Memo for the non-paying customer (A credit memo is just a payment, but it in this case you will credit A/R and debit your temporary asset holding account).  This will ensure the income and customer A/R reporting stays clean. In fact, this would be a perfect solution if gc had Debit Memo as an A/R option. This  solution still involves a temporary account;  however, it ensures that the payment stays whole.  i.e. a customer account reflects a true payment history.  It also ensures that any deviation from that history is documented as a debit memo (dummy invoice) or a credit memo (dummy payment). This method is more complicated than that noted below but it has the additional advantages noted above.

One problem I noticed however, I created my accounts from scratch and had no trouble crediting an asset account.  Unfortunately, when I was working on a demo for you it appeared I  was unable to credit an asset account while creating an invoice using default accounts from gc.  Strange.

--- On Mon, 4/19/10, Maf. King <maf at chilwell.net> wrote:

From: Maf. King <maf at chilwell.net>
Subject: Re: One customer paying for another customer invoice?
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Date: Monday, April 19, 2010, 3:55 PM

On Monday 19 April 2010 22:35:27 Geert Janssens wrote:
> On Friday 16 April 2010, edog5948 wrote:
> > Hi -
> >
> > Thanks for the additional way to think of this.
> >
> > Your recap isn't quite what happened though.
> >
> > Customer A invoiced $X.
> >
 Customer B invoiced $Y.
> >
> > Customer B paid Customer A $Y.
> > Customer A paid me $(X+Y).
> >
> > Thus, I've been paid fully, but Customer B never paid me directly.
> >
> > Just don't know how to handle reporting this in gnucash.
>
> In such a situation I would focus on the invoices instead of the customers.
> You received a payment for invoice X and for invoice Y.
>
> So presuming you are using the business functions,
> - find invoice X,
> - process payment for amount X,
> - find invoice Y
> - process a payment for amount Y.
>
> If you wish you can add a note somewhere indicating the invoice was paid by
> another customer.
>
> Just one possible suggestion.
>
> Regards,
>
> Geert

Hi,

That is certainly one solution, but if there is just one payment of (X+Y) in 
the
 current account, you will have to pick that up manually when you 
reconcile.

The only way I can see to do this "properly" is to Process Payment for X and Y 
separately, as Geert suggests, but place the payment into a temporary 
account, and then aggregate it and transfer to the Bank account as one txn. 
(similar to previous discussions on this list about handling transfers with 
different clearing dates etc.)

HTH,
Maf.
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