Reporting positive and negative customer balances separately.

[Buddha Buck]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Robert Smits <bob at rsmits.ca> wrote:

> > > Is there a way to customize the balance sheet report so it'll split out
> > > A/R into the two types of account balances?
> >
> > Have you tried the Customer Aging report?
> >
> > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> >
> > -derek
>
> What is the Customer Aging Report, and where do I find it?


This reminds me, I never answered Derek's question...

For your question, the Customer Aging Report is available (I assume) under
Reports->Business->Receivable Aging Report.

It provides a listing of all customers, their current balance, and how much
they have outstanding from invoices over different time periods -- how much
they owe from 0-30 days, from 31-60 days, from 61-90 days, and over 90
days.  The report also contains links to each customer and to their current
customer report.  It looks like a good report for working within GnuCash,
not necessarily intended to be printed out (and certainly not distributed
outside your organization).

To answer Derek's question:

Yes, assuming that the Customer Aging report is the same as the Receivable
Aging report, I have tried it.

It doesn't do quite what I wanted, although it (theoretically) has the
information I need if I'm willing to massage it by hand.  What I was hoping
for was a way to easily say that there are $800 in prepaid invoices and
$600 in outstanding unpaid invoices, giving an A/R balance of -$200.  With
the Aging report, I can get this data by adding up the positive and
negative total values separately.

Or I think I could.  I'm uncertain what settings I have to make in order to
do that.  By default, I only get a portion of the customers.  My first
thought was that it only included customers who had unpaid invoices, but I
see one customer with a negative balance, and one customer with a zero
balance, so it's not just folks with unpaid invoices.  When I select the
option "Show zero balance items", I seem to get all our customers, both
those who have paid ahead and those who haven't (as well those with zero
balances).  The total shown at the bottom of the page does not match the
 A/R balance on the balance sheet for the same time (it's off by $20).

It's possible I'm asking too much of the report, or I just don't understand
it, but until I know it's limitations I'm not going to trust it.