Accounts Receivable payments for taxes

[Derek Atkins]

Richard Geddes <richardcgeddes at gmail.com> writes:

> Thanks for the quick reply.
>
> A few follow-up questions:
>
> 1. Do the GNUCash Business Features allow for Cash Based accounting? 

By definition, no.  Receivables and Payables are, by definition,
accruals.  You are entering an item that will get paid at a later date.
However, you can still manually convert to cash based accounting by
offsetting your income for the period by your outstanding receivables.

> 2. If I convert to Cash Based accounting in GC, do I loose the business
> features... invoicing, aging, etc..?

It depends on how you convert.  My business has always run under a Cash
basis, even though I use the business features.  It's only an issue for
an invoice that gets issued in one period and paid in the next.  In that
case you just need to account for that properly.

> 3. Is there a checkbox/drop-down to tell GC which accounting method I
> want (Accrual or Cash Based accounting)?  or is that I go back and
> change the invoice dates to the payment dates?

No, there is no checkbox.  As I said, the definition of "payables"
implies accrual.  You just need to live with the fact that the dates are
accrual dates, not cash dates.  But as I said, that's only an issue if
they occur across a period.

> Regards,
> Richard

-derek

> On 03/22/2013 10:45 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Richard Geddes <richardcgeddes at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Gnucash 2.4.10, Linux.
>>>
>>> I've been using the A/R to invoice and generate aging reports without
>>> issues.
>>>
>>> When I generate a new invoice, I select an Income Account for each line
>>> of the invoice ( Income:Sales:xxxx - xxxx would be a company for further
>>> breakdown).
>>>
>>> As soon as I post the invoice, an entry in the Income:Sales:xxxx account
>>> is created with the date of the invoice.
>>>
>>> When I post a payment for an invoice, an entry is created in my bank
>>> account and in the A/R account.
>>>
>>> Because there is a lag (up to 2 months) of payment, at the end of the
>>> year, invoices generated in the previous year are paid in the following
>>> year.
>>>
>>> When I tag an Income:Sales:xxxx account as tax related, the Tax Report
>>> picks up the invoice dates and sums, not the actual payment dates and sums.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to get A/R to generate an entry into Income:Sales:xxxx
>>> when the payment is made or a Tax Report that only considers payments
>>> made on invoices?
>> No.  Using the Business Features necessarily creates an Accrual-based
>> accounting.  You need to manually convert from Accrual to Cash-based.
>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Richard
>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>> -derek
>>
>
>
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available