gnucash and accrual accounting

Kash kash at warmplanetbikes.com
Wed Dec 26 14:08:56 EST 2012


This is sort of an accounting question, but relates specifically to 
implementing in gnucash, so please bear with me.

I've recently started to set up bill payments and invoicing using 
gnucash's built in capabilities
Business> Vendor> new bill
Business> Customer> new invoice

The effect seems to be consistent with accrual; The P&L is affected, but 
not the cash flow or balance sheet. This means that I can set up 
transactions in to show up in the month when they were earned, or 
incurred, but pay or collect in a different month.

I've got two questions.

1.) Is it correct that I can generally use billing and invoicing for 
accrual rather than setting up my own manual system of A/P accounts? Are 
there any foreseeable drawbacks?

2.) How do I split payments so that they show up across several periods 
in the income statement, but are actually paid and appear on the cash 
flow as one payment? For example, I have a continuous service that I'd 
like to appear on monthly P&L, but that is actually paid annually?


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