Cancelling a pre-paid sale in GnuCash

[Michael Hendry]

On 8 Mar 2013, at 16:00, Buddha Buck <blaisepascal at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's the situation:
> 
> Two customers registered for a class my non-profit is offering, and paid
> for it via PayPal.  I recorded this in GnuCash by creating two invoices for
> the class (with a posted date of 2013-03-10, the date of the class) and a
> payment for each invoice (with payment date of 2-10 and 2-14, the dates of
> the payments/registrations).
> 
> Unfortunately, the minimum class size the instructor is willing to teach is
> 5, and so the class was cancelled when the registration deadline passed. I
> need to refund the class fees to the two participants.
> 
> How in GnuCash do I process the refund?
> 
> What I want to happen in the end is that the Customer Report for that
> customer report a balance of $0, my PayPal balance went up by the price of
> the class on 2-10 and 2-14, and down by twice the price of a class on 3-8,
> and that the net income is $0.
> 
> I haven't found much of help in the mailing list archives, but perhaps I
> was looking for the wrong keywords.
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I don't run a business, and don't issue invoices using GnuCash, so my first thought was "Simple, what's needed is a Credit Note!"

So I looked at the help text for references to Credit Notes and couldn't find any.

I did find this, though, which appears to be a reference to work-in-progress rather than a definitive solution:

http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Credit_Notes

It's not immediately clear to me whether the sections marked "DONE" mean that these changes are available in the most recent copy of GnuCash. I suppose it would be worthwhile to try to set up an invoice with a negative value, and see if it works - as I don't have any customers or products on my set-up, you'd have to try that one yourself!

Michael