Customer Summary Report

[Robert L Brush III]

On Fri, 2013-06-21 at 16:24 +0000, Robert Smits wrote:
> 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. 
> 
The report you are looking for is Accounts Receivable, that is the best
list  of customers with their payment status.  The report you are
looking at is only looking for differences between income and expenses,
neither of which have to be paid, and in fact paying will not change the
results of  the report.  When making this report, there were specific
cases that were solved, but every effort was made to keep things neutral
enough so it could be a general purpose tool and possibly used in  other
ways in the future.

I think it would  be  best  to  rename the customer summary report the
customer  profit report, but I  don't know how involved that would
be.  
> 
> > 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. 

No particular expense was  hand picked, but all are included by default,
and really they have to be selected on an individual basis, there  isn't
a perfect  way to decide without knowing the way the accounts are set
up.
> 
> > 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.
It is a business feature to record invoices you receive from your
vendors if you choose to track that sort of thing.

http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/bus-ap-bills1.html

> 
> >
> > 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. 
Glad to 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.

Just in case, it  would be recommended to set up intermediate accounts,
when a check is received it goes into  the bottom of the drawer, but
gets labelled  as it is going into "Checks to deposit". If it is a
credit  card  it goes into "Square Register".  This is sometime
necessary to reflect the crazy realities.  Usually the customer will
want credit shown on their  statement for the day they write the check,
usually the bank will give credit on a specific day, but not usually the
day the check was written.  The credit card company usually keeps some
of the money, so it is easier to keep all their  dealings in one
register, making it easier  to locate down the road.
>  
> 
> What I had hoped the Customer Summary would do is show a list of customers, 
> their paid and outstanding invoices, and nothing else. 

I can't wait until you see the Customer Overview Page, it has helped
with our work process, and should be easier to work with than the A/R
report, I'm not sure  when it will be widely available..

Thanks, Bob 
-- 
Robert L. Brush III
Raleigh Tile of Beckley ** West Virginia
1934 Robert C. Byrd Drive ** Beckley, WV  25801
Phone: 304.252.9226 ** Fax: 304.252.9292 ** Mobile: 304.575.8453
bob at raleightile.com