Advice needed for billing

[Timothy Wight]

On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 14:46 +0100, Maf. King wrote:
> On Thursday 07 April 2011 14:33:14 Timothy Wight wrote:
> > I am struggling to use the vendor billing for suppliers that require
> > advance payment.  The business process is as follows:
> >
> > 1)	We place an order for multiple items.  The vendor either replies with
> > a pro-forma invoice OR (more often) we are ordering using an online
> > system and know the order value immediately.
> > 2)	Our overseas suppliers terms are usually 'payment with order' so We
> > transfer funds (make payment?) for the order value.
> > 3)	At a later date the supplier ships those items he can fulfil from
> > stock and issues an invoice for the shipment.
> > 4)	At further date/s the supplier ships back order items when available
> > and issues one or more invoices for these shipments.
> > 5)	If the back order delay for an item is too great for our purpose we
> > may cancel the item, or adjust the quantity.
> >
> > So the final collection of invoices are likely not to match the order
> > value.  Some items can be shipped/invoiced after subsequent orders
> > placed and paid.  This is further complicated by the use of currency
> > trading accounts and exchange rate changes throughout.
> >
> > Can anybody offer any advice how to achieve this?
> >
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don't use the vendor bills approach when I buy something which requires 
> up-front payment.  IMHO, such a transaction defeats the point of Accounts 
> Payables!
> 
> I just put a transaction directly between Bank:Current and Expenses:Widgets 
> (and split the VAT off manually into VAT_Inputs)
> 
> HTH,
> Maf.
> 
> 
> 
The AP account shows how much of my funds the supplier is holding
'unfullfilled'.  In my experience suppliers are much better at tracking
customer debts than customer credits :-)