Bill splits don't post to expense acct with their own date

Shane Litherland litherland-farm at bigpond.com
Sat Feb 4 04:34:24 EST 2012


Hi all,

this has been hurting my head...
I was wondering if it was something to do with cash vs accruals
accounting methodology, but I'm not so sure. I think there's something
in GNUcash that isnt' doing what I think it should be doing. I'd
appreciate if someone can enlighten me... 

Scenario: A bill received that has dated expenses on it, such as a
quarterly bank statement with end-of-month fees itemised (and paid by
direct debit on the same day). Yes, its a 'statement' not an 'invoice'
but as it is the only paper record of those expenses, I enter it as a
'bill' in GNUcash just like I do for anything with 'Invoice' printed on
the top. That aside, it demonstrates my problem well.

Now, when I enter a bill like this, for each item I can put a date.
When I post the bill, I use the post date that the bill was issued,
which is usually a date later than all the items on it.

I can tolerate that in A/P the entire amount is listed on the 'posting
date'.

What is really giving me a headache though, is the individual items of
that bill are posted to their expense accounts with the same 'posting
date', NOT the date each item was given in the bill splits.

So what the heck is the point of me painfully dating those splits if
they're not going to show up as an expense on that date?!??

What makes it more weird/frustrating, is if I don't accumulate splits, I
still get multiple entries all on the 'posting date' in the expense
acct.

So, if I got a bill on 20th August, and on the bill I itemised:
30/04 bank fees april 1.50
31/05 bank fees may   3.75
31-07 bank fees july  2.25

After I post that bill on 20th August, those three items are listed in
Expenses:Bank Fees on 20th August.

Even if I make several partial payments of that bill, to match the dates
of each month (i.e. the day it's charged is the day it's paid by direct
debit) won't solve it. The payments from my cheque acct will show the
date of each item, but those payments are going into A/P to offset the
bill amount when 'posted date' comes around.

Ponder a moment, if you will, the consequences of this situation when
the 'posting date' is in the next financial year (august) yet the bill
has items that were charged in the prior financial year (april, may) and
the new year (july)... they're posted in my expenses for 20th august.

I have workarounds - I can do manual adjustments in the expense accts to
'move' the expenses back to the 'proper' dates and tidy it up for the
different financial years. Or, as I previously did, I can enter three
separate bills with one item, each of them billed/paid/posted all on
their relevant date. But both of those approaches are messy and/or take
more time.

What is the reasoning for GNUcash completely ignoring the dates for bill
splits when it comes to posting them to their expense accounts??
Or SHOULD GNUcash be using those dates but there's a bug in there
somewhere??

more troubled than I should be,
shane.



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