total newbie - did something dumb - please help

[Geert Janssens]

On Tuesday 22 April 2014 10:31:15 Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> roberta actor-thomas <roberta.actorthomas at gmail.com> writes:
> > Thank you so much for your response, Derek. I'll go back to the
> > point where I'd created accounts, but not yet entered any sales,
> > create my customer and read up on how to connect sales and invoices
> > to the amount the customer owes in AR.
> 
> All you do is create the Invoice for the Customer, assigned
> "Income:Sales" (or whatever income/sales account you use) to the
> line-items in the Invoice, then post the invoice to A/R.  That will
> generate the "Income -> A/R" transaction.  Later, when they pay, just
> "Process Payment" for the amount they paid.
> 
> >    They overpaid too, but want it to be applied to the next sale, so
> >    that> 
> > will make it extra interesting. I know that extra $ is supposed to
> > hang out in a liability account like "Unearned" - will see what the
> > guide says about overpayments.
> 
> If it is overpaid the overpayment will hang around in A/R and will
> automatically apply to future posted invoices for the Customer.  This
> feature has always been there since the first release that included
> the business features.
> 
> > Thanks again,
> > Roberta
> 
> -derek
Whether or not an overpayment will be applied automatically to the next invoice depends on 
the version of gnucash and the preferences set. Prior to gnucash 2.6 these overpayments did 
indeed get applied automatically to newly posted invoices unconditionally.

In 2.6 it depends on the preferences set in Edit->Preferences->Business. If configured not to 
apply the overpayment automatically, you can apply it yourself by choosing the apply 
payment button. The overpayment will appear in the list of unprocessed invoices/payments.

Geert

> 
> > On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> >     Hi,
> >     
> >     Roberta Actor-Thomas <roberta.actorthomas at gmail.com> writes:
> >     > I was in a hurry and didn't read enough of the guide before I
> >     > started. I created sales which appeared in AR. However I
> >     > didn't create the customer until a day later. Now when I
> >     > enter the payment, it doubles the amount owed so it looks
> >     > like sales in that amount were made twice. I have been trying
> >     > to get rid of my first invoice and can't do that and it's
> >     > appearing twice in the AR account.
> >     
> >     Alas, the only way you can fix it is by reverting to a backup
> >     file from before you created the erroneous transaction.
> >      (Either that or you need to manually delete the transaction
> >     from the XML data manually, but we don't recommend hand-editing
> >     your data file, especially without making good backups first).
> >     
> >     Sorry,
> >     
> >     > 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