Using bank exports (CSV, QIF, ...) to avoid the overhead that comes from processing bills

[Geert Janssens]

On Tuesday 9 March 2010, Eric Ladner wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 2:47 AM, Tom Van Braeckel
> 
> <tomvanbraeckel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My question is: What are you other business users doing to (partially)
> > automate their MKB workflow ?
> > What do you think about my idea, or what other approaches would you
> > suggest ?
> 
> Not sure if I'm adding anything but if I understand correctly, MKB is
> if YOU are running a business, but from your transactions it looks
> like you're just managing a regular checkbook/credit cards/savings
> account type stuff.  Bills from the MKB perspective are bills that YOU
> send to other people, not bills that you pay.  (somebody correct me if
> I'm horribly wrong)
> 
Let me take a stab at explaining a bit better what the issue is here.

Just to start off, MKB is short for the Dutch term "Midden- en klein bedrijf", 
which is SMB ("Small to Medium Business") in English or KMO ("Kleine tot 
middelgrote onderneming") in Flemish (the Belgian-local variant of Dutch).

How you run this business is a personal choice, save the legal obligations.

GnuCash adds some features that help you track both the bills you receive from 
your vendors and the invoices you send to your customers. These features are 
usually referred to as the "Business features", which are unfortunately not 
documented at all yet in the official documentation.

In short, these features allow to keep track of your vendors, customers, 
employees and the invoices and orders that go with them.

If you input your vendor's bills, GnuCash allows you to specify the billing 
terms (when do I have to pay at the latest), and will remind you of bills due 
in the near future. This is very convenient.

While you don't get a similar "invoice due" reminder if you input your 
customer's invoices, doing so will allow you to print invoices. Note that an 
"invoice due" reminder could have its uses as well, but it's simply not 
implemented.

So far for the business part of GnuCash. It's main advantages are that you can 
keep track of paid/unpaid invoices and specific business reporting 
(vendor/customer reports,...). It helps in avoiding mistakes such as double 
payments, or forgotten invoices,...


Then there is accounting in general (personal or business accounting). This 
usually comes with a lot of data entry. For personal accounting this is mainly 
copying the information from your bank statements into GnuCash. To reduce this 
work a little, GnuCash provides a number of importers that can help you copy 
some of this information in a semi-automated way (see the various import 
options in the File menu).

Unfortunately this isn't compatible with the business features, or more 
accurately put: the business features and the importers are totally unaware of 
each other. There's no way you can tell the importer "Hey, this payment here 
is actually a payment for this invoice". Nor can you go into the business 
features and say "That bill over there is actually paid by the transaction 
that is already in account such and so".

So there's the issue: what do you do if you want the best of both worlds ? 
Both use the importer and the business features ?
I'm afraid I don't know. These two just don't work together right now.

Geert