instalment payments

[Matthew Dundon]

Hello everyone, and sorry if this question has already been asked, but here goes:

I'm trying to use GnuCash to record and plan for revenues and expenses in my
small business. I have clients that often pay me in 6 to 10 installments for a
service that I provide over an 8 to 10 month period. Is there a convenient way
to record this as one transaction with multiple payment dates built into
GnuCash, or do I need to create a separate invoice for each installment? When I
try to record the transaction on one invoice and then process each installment
as a partial payment, I seem to get a"revenue balloon", where I have a large
amount of income predicted for the month in which the invoice is written, and
then just a lump sum of the outstanding balance for the subsequent months as
accounts receivable. When I record each installment as a separate invoice, my
totals come out right in given months, but I have considerably more data entry
and it is less convenient to track how much a given client has remaining as
outstanding balance at any given time.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Regards,

M Dundon