Using GnuCash for a web-based business?

[Maf. King]

HI, welcome to the list and GnuCash.

On Thursday 21 January 2010 22:11:23 Omari Stephens wrote:

>   - Why does gnucash force me to enter a payment/billing address when I
> set up a vendor/customer?  I get prints done at foo.com, let's say, and
> I have no idea where foo.com is, or what it's address might be.  I also
> have customers whom I don't interact with, personally; I have no way of
> knowing their address.
>
> What I would like to do is just set "Company Name" to "foo.com" or "John
> Q. Customer" and be done with it.

IIRC you only need to have an entry in the first address field.  Seems to me 
that you can answer your first two questions at the same time, and use the 
first line of the postal address to hold the URL.

>
>   - In the same vein, in this day and age, it would seem natural to have
> an explicit "URL" entry in the Vendor information.  Many companies have
> different email addresses to contact, and will have a single "Contacts"
> webpage that lists the addresses.  Furthermore, if an email address
> doesn't seem to be working (suppose, the representative left the
> company, or is on leave), it's nice to have a canonical location to
> attempt to find more-up-to-date information.
>
>   - In many cases, the details of a sale will be handled on my behalf by
> one of my vendors — I only find out after the sale has been completed.
> Even so, I would like to keep track of customers on my own, in case (for
> instance) a customer buys a print online and another print in person.
>
> Since, in most cases, I will be paid up front, before the customer
> receives their print, is there a shortcut to the whole Invoice/Payment
> flow that would allow me to bypass most of the "this is an interactive
> process" machinery?  Note that there are still some sales where I
> _would_ need to use the Invoice/Payment flow, so it would still need to
> be available somehow.
>

I don't know of a way to auto-generate invoices within GC.  You could just not 
use the business features, since if the payment is often up-front, then you 
don't really need the concept of an "account receivable", but it would make 
reporting on any given customer harder. (separate income account per 
customer, possibly)

HTH,
Maf.