Business-feature questions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Derek Atkins wrote:

>Hi,
>
>On Fri, June 3, 2011 8:30 am, Gareth Edwards wrote:
>  
>
>>On 1 June 2011 07:06, Gareth Edwards <gareth at edwardsfamily.org.uk> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I'm trying to use GnuCash to run the finances of a social club and I
>>>have a couple of questions about the use of the invoicing and A/R in
>>>GnuCash. Each member is a Customer, and subscriptions are invoiced
>>>
>>>1) Quite a few members pay in advance, which GC is showing as
>>>pre-payment in A/R, which is fine. However, I can't figure out how to
>>>show the current balance for any given member. How do I do this?
>>>
>>>2) One of our members has a positive balance and has decided to pay
>>>the subscriptions for this month on behalf of another member out of
>>>this balance. How do I transfer a payment from one Customer into the
>>>account of another Customer?
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I guess this can't be done then? I'll have to revert to manual
>>spreadsheets if that's the case, which will be a shame.
>>    
>>
>
>The former should be possible in the Customer Report.  Have you tried
>that?  The latter is not currently possible -- there is no way for one
>customer to pay "on behalf of" another customer.
>
>  
>
While I don't  use the "customer" features I'm not that sure an 
adjustment of this sort would be impossible. Let's try asking a couple 
questions.

1) If the first customer (the one who will be paying on behalf of the 
other) asked for a portion of his/her excess balance be refunded, is 
this possible? What would the transaction look like? (what is the other 
account in this case -- presumably checking as you cut this customer a 
refund check)
2) If the second customer (the one on whose behalf the payment will be 
made) were to be paying normally what would that transaction look like? 
(again, what is the other account -- presumably also checking on the 
opposite side from the first question as you deposit a check from the 
customer).
3) You can't construct a transaction that does this? (those two entries 
to checking cancel  each other out)

Michael