Customer Summary Report

[Robert Smits]

On June 17, 2013 01:13:13 am Robert L Brush III wrote:
> The "Customer Summary Report" is a customer profit report, it can help
> with job analysis by comparing the income and expenses for a specific
> customer.  Under the options for the report a tab labeled "Expense
> Accounts" will allow the selection of one or many expense accounts.
> Likewise the tab for "Income Accounts" will allow the selection of one
> or more income accounts.  The tab for "Display" will allow sorting by
> name, profit percentage, or amount of profit.  The "No Customer" is a
> warning that the report may be inaccurate, as the results are not all
> properly labeled.
>

Thanks for the reply, but now I'm more confused than ever.

If the report is titled Customer Summary Report, why is it dragging in stuff 
that has nothing to do with customers? All I expect is to get a list of all 
my customers what their status - paid up, owe money, etc. 


> Possible use scenarios:
>
> Tracking retail sales from different cities:
> Income:Princeton Showroom Sales
> Income:Beckley Showroom Sales
> Expense:Princeton COGS
> Expense:Beckley COGS
>
> Tracking rental properties:
> Income:Downtown
> Income:Northwestern
> Income:Park Ave
> Expense:Downtown
> Expense:Northwestern
> Expense:Park Ave
>
> Tracking types of business:
> Income:Labor
> Income:Materials
> Expense:Labor
> Expense:Cost of Goods Sold
>
> Tracking commission sales:
> Income:Robert Sales
> Income:Micah Sales
> Expense:Robert COGS
> Expense:Micah COGS
>
> So to get the most out of the report use the Income & Expense tabs to
> hone down the information displayed on the report.  By default it
> includes all income and expense accounts, GnuCash can't really predict
> the names and classification of income and expense accounts.  To be
> useful out of the box, any thing that happened income or expense wise
> shows up as "No Customer": Rent, Paychecks, Utilities, Bank Charges..
> everything.  Luckily it is easy to remove this information, if it is
> distracting.  It can also shed a light on how much information is being
> ignored, if the settings are overly selective the report might look
> good, but only be showing 10% of the picture.
>

Well, rent, for example has no connection with a customer. I don't understand 
why rent would show up in a customer summary. 

> Why does the information look out of place by default:
>
> All invoices have an "Owner" in GnuCash speak, so any invoices made will
> show a customer and make it to the report.  When creating a "Bill" the
> "Default Chargeback Customer" is blank, and often gets underused.  To
> use the profit report this needs to be utilized, this is the tag that
> decides which line to attach the expense.  Without a customer the bill
> will belong to "No Customer", when entering income in a random register
> instead of creating an invoice, it  will also  belong to "No Customer",
> but that doesn't happen very often.

What Bill are you talking about? In my system I have only three invoices to 
date, each of them associated with a particular customer. What are you 
calling a Bill? I don't think I've ever created one.

>
> Inventory based businesses won't benefit as much because of the nature
> of the report.  Currently there isn't a way to avoid this.  Creating
> invoices for items out of inventory usually shows as 100% profit, hardly
> reality.  The best way to handle this is to use a different income
> account and exclude it from the report, if that won't over-complicate
> the entry of invoices.  Once you get on a good start the invoice line
> item auto-fill will help remember the accounts for inventory items.
>
> Good luck!

Thanks, Bob. I appreciate your help. 

What I've been doing to implement invoices is creating a list of customers, 
then creating an invoice for each sale, associated with a particular 
customer, and posting it to accounts receivable. When I get payment I process 
the payment and the money goes into the checking account. 

What I had hoped the Customer Summary would do is show a list of customers, 
their paid and outstanding invoices, and nothing else. 

Thanks, Bob

-- 
Bob Smits <bob at rsmits.ca> 
"Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the 
answer."   - Erik Naggum