cannot get AP invoice to enter correct accounts

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Walter Sams <walter at samsco.biz> writes:

> I have installed gnucash 2.4.2 on unity linux to see if it will handle our theaters accounting
> We need to be able to track costs and income by shows (  ie    job costing )
>
> I have set a customer to       Cust
> I have created a job for the customer   play1
> I have vendors entered                        vend1
> I have a vendor job entered                 play1   ( I set the same name for the customer and vendor jobs )
>
> When I enter an invoice from vend1    and enter the job information  the program then opens up the register
> this is where I should enter   date, inv #,  description, type ( material or labor),  expense account,  amount  etc
>
> the problem is that where I am expecting    Expense Account  entry    gnucash is only letting me enter income accounts from the dropdown list

Customer Invoices are for Income.
Vendor Bills are for Expenses.

> I checked in the tutitorial and it said that I should be entering
> expense accounts   ( as I was expecting)   
>
> Can someone help me understand what is going on?

You're using a customer invoice when you should be using a vendor bill.

> I don't want to start up the great debate on how job costing should be done here,  I just want to know how can I use gnucash to accomplish my task
>
> I must be able to print reports that show   that for play1    I took in $x.xx  in ticket sales   and spent  $x.xx  in programs, costumes, props, etc.....
> and since we do  more than one show per year  I dont want to create a complete chart of accounts for each play

Unfortunately GnuCash probably isn't set up well to do Job Costing per
se.  I think all the basic data are there, but the tools are definitely
not flushed out to give you the output you're looking for.

There may be some pieces missing.  In particular, there is nothing to
tie a Vendor Job to a Customer Job.  The closest you get is the Vendor
"Chargeback" that will let you bill a customer for stuff you buy on
their behalf.

I'm wondering if perhaps you shouldn't be using the business features
for your particular issue.  You're not really dealing with A/R and A/P
here.  Or at least it doesn't sound like it.

> your help is appreciated
>
>
> Walter 

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-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
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available