Cancelling a pre-paid sale in GnuCash

[Buddha Buck]

A Credit Note looks like it would be a good idea for cancelling the
invoice/recording the refund, but (a) it's not available in the currently
released version, and (b) it doesn't look like it, alone, would solve the
recording of the return of money issue.

I think I could get the effect I want if I could make a negative payment.
 However, the "Process Payment" UI checks and verifies that the payment is
positive.  There isn't a "Process Refund" UI, unfortunately.

I suppose I could get the effect on the accounts I want by unposting the
invoice, deleting the payment transaction from the A/R register, manually
adding the payment transaction against a misc liability account with the
date of the payment, and then adding the refund transaction with the date
of the refund to counter the payment.  I don' t like that in part because
it feels like I'm mucking about with history, and the books for a given day
won't accurately reflect what we thought on that day, but if the system
can't handle it otherwise, what can I do?



On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> 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
>
>