Inventory

[Steve Hill]

I'm trying to do inventory tracking in Gnucash.  I've set up a stock 
account and can buy items (let's say tins of paint) by transferring 
money from a bank account to the stock account.

When I later sell an item, the proceeds of the sale get transferred to the 
bank account.  The realised gains get pulled in from an income acount.

I.e. if I buy a tin of paint for £20 then £20 get transferred from the 
bank account to the inventory account.  If I then sell that tin of paint 
for £36, £36 gets transferred from the inventory account to the bank 
account and £16 gets transferred from an income account to the inventory 
account in order to account for the realised gain.

So far so good.  However, I don't understand how to invoice for inventory 
that people have purchased.  Since only the gain (£16) comes from an 
income account, how do I invoice for the full cost of the paint (£36), 
which is what the customer will be paying?

It would make sense for the "income account" listed in the invoice to be 
the inventory account rather than a real income account.  But if I do 
this, posting the invoice causes a transaction to go into the inventory 
account with the "shares" column set to zero, even though "quantity" was 
non-zero in the invoice itself.  I can't go back and correct this 
transaction in the inventory account because transactions created by 
posted invoices are read-only.

I'm sure there must be something fundamental that I've missed. :)

-- 

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence