Bill vs Invoice ?

[Derek Atkins]

"Maf. King" <maf at chilwell.net> writes:

> On Wednesday 13 January 2010 17:04:42 Geert Janssens wrote:
>> As a non-native English speaker, I am wondering about the difference
>> between the terms "Bill" and "Invoice".
>>
>> Gnucash uses a "Bill" to indicate a document provided by a vendor and
>> "Invoice" for a document provided by a customer.
>>
>> But in my native language (Dutch, being from Belgium) the literal
>> translations of these words have a subtle difference in meaning. Only the
>> Dutch word for "Invoice" (being "Factuur") is used in a business context.
>> So we have Customer Invoices and Vendor Invoices if we want to
>> differentiate between these two.
>>
>> The Dutch word for "Bill" ("Rekening") is mostly used more informally, or
>> outside of business contexts. I would ask for the bill in a restaurant for
>> example.
>>
>> So how is this in English ? And is it different or the same in the various
>> English speaking countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia,...) ?
>>
>> Feedback is appreciated, it may help me improve the wording in the Gnucash
>> business functions.
>>
>
>
> Hi Geert,
>
> IMHO, British English pretty much follows the use pattern you have in Dutch.  
>
> Bill and Invoice are somewhat interchangeable words, but "bill" is certainly 
> less formal (both in an accounting sense, and language sense) than "invoice".
>
> My wife and I might talk about "paying the electricity bill" for example, even 
> though it is effectively an "account payable vendor invoice", but equally, in 
> a restaurant I would ask for the bill, too.  I can't think of a case 
> where "invoice" would be used domestically in preference to "bill"
>
> My business definitely [sends/receives] invoices [to/from] our 
> [customers/suppliers] though, but I would be perfectly clearly understood if 
> I asked my bookeeper "if the bill from supplier X" had been paid yet (or "has 
> Customer Y paid their bill?")! 
>
> Did that clear anything up?!!

To sum it up, when I wrote the code I wanted to have relatively short
words that could clearly differentiate everything.  I didn't want to
have to say "Customer Invoice", "Vendor Bill", Employee Expense Voucher"
every time, let alone have that in the UI!  Imagine "Customer Invoice
ID", or other sub-items that would need to be defined.  So I came up
with words that, in English, are close to the same meaning but I could
apply them differently.  And thus was born "Invoice" and "Bill".

I didn't want to call everything an Invoice, because in other languages
it COULD be different.  So I wanted to differentiate them.

Really, the only real difference is whether the result is Income or
Expense..  And the Employee UI is slightly different because it offers
Cash or Charge support.

Hope this helps,

> Maf.

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-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
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