Support Assistance

[Wm]

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:05:00 
<CAAyPE3A3ysJc7ZXqjhfz-ARGobSN0wCXbjr9-fEMTwm-UPWawQ at mail.gmail.com> 
Buddha Buck <blaisepascal at gmail.com>

>On Wed Dec 31 2014 at 4:34:51 AM Wm 
>  Are you sure you mean an invoice?  Presuming there is no goods or
>  service that you are invoicing for, what happens if someone can't or
>  doesn't pay?  Is there a debt on their account?

>If a church member began the year by making a pledge to make monthly
>contributions to the church, does it create monthly invoices?

I don't know, they don't *in an accounting sense* at an org I'm doing 
some work for at the moment.  I met with the auditor a few weeks back 
and this came up.  Pledges (to use your term) are budgeted for, e-mail 
invoices (variable amounts in their case) are sent out, they are chased 
up, etc but there is no invoice in AR (they don't use gnc, yet) if they 
don't / can't pay.  All that is done in a spreadsheet, reason being some 
affiliate organisations pay more than pledged, others pay what they can 
afford at the time, etc.  What they don't do is (in an accounting sense) 
say X promised 120 a year and skipped a month and show the 10 as an 
asset (unpaid debt) in the statutory accounts and go about writing off 
unpaid amounts when people die, etc.

>If a person signs up for an annual gym membership, payable monthly,
>does it create monthly invoices?

Yup.  Probably not a good example as in some cases here in the UK it has 
been ruled that not using the gym meant the person didn't have to pay.

>If the answers are different, why?

Because there is a (sometimes) legally enforceable contract.  If someone 
changes faith or moves to another town and attends a different church do 
they still owe what they pledged?  Can they successfully and legally be 
sued?  Is there even a contract?

It probably varies according to jurisdiction and the OP didn't say where 
they are AND is it even good PR to chase people that can't afford what 
they have pledged because of a change in circumstances, e.g. lost their 
job?

>To answer the original question: no, GnuCash does not have the shortcut
>you are asking for. I wish it did, for similar reasons (generating
>monthly invoices for memberships in a not-for-profit).

Memberships are different as, I think, they confer benefits.

>It does, however, have the ability to import invoices from a CSV file.
>You can create a spreadsheet with a row for every member and a column
>for every necessary field for the import, and then monthly update the
>invoice numbers and dates in the spreadsheet, export the spreadsheet as
>a CSV, import the spreadsheet into GnuCash, and you'll have your
>monthly invoices.

Could recurring transactions not be used to good effect here?  It is 
going to need to be set up one way or another and it seems to me to make 
a significant difference whether they are pro-forma invoices or not.

-- 
Wm...