Support Assistance

[Buddha Buck]

On Wed Dec 31 2014 at 12:25:42 PM Wm <wm+gnc at tarrcity.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> 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 in January X pledged 100/month for a year and died in March, I wouldn't
send them an invoice after that, nor would I bother the estate for the
remaining 900, either. If I had already posted an unpaid invoice, I
probably would either (a) unpost it, or (b) "pay" it out of a
Expenses:Miscellaneous account. Of course, I might have a better idea if I
talked to an accountant about it.


> >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.
>

I buy insurance on my car in 6-month increments, with monthly bills. It's a
similar thing. I can cancel at any time (subject to statutory requirements
to have insurance on any registered vehicle, and contractual requirements
to have "comprehensive" insurance on any vehicle financed by my bank), and
receive future bills. I'm fairly certain that if I paid the whole 6 month
premium up front, and then cancelled it two months later I'd get a refund
from the insurance company. They still invoice me monthly.

>
> >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?
>

That is a very good reason one of the FAQs for this list is that this list
isn't here to give accounting advice: To find out what to do, talk to an
accountant; to find out how to do it in GnuCash, ask here.

The original question was if GnuCash had a shortcut to automate the
creation of monthly invoices, not if monthly invoices were appropriate for
the circumstances.


> 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.
>

Invoices in GnuCash tie in with the "Business Features" (customers and
vendors" functionality, and encompass more than a simple transaction. They
have a customer attached, they have linked payments, and they typically go
through the A/R account, which the manual basically says to not use
manually. It's a whole kettle of wax of functionality semi-bolted onto the
core GnuCash functionality. There is no scheduled invoice functionality.

Besides, scheduled transactions are a poor fit here, primarily for the same
reasons you think invoices are a poor fit. What happens if you've scheduled
a transaction of "X donates 100/month on the 5th, for one year", and X
fails to make a donation? The transaction needs to be voided/reversed. And
it's hard to catch when something didn't happen.

In my opinion, scheduled transactions are best for automated
transactions:direct deposit, scheduled bill payments, automatic
withdrawals, etc, where the date and amount of the transaction is clearly
pre-determined and doesn't require manual handling. I wouldn't want to use
a scheduled transaction for anything involving transferring funds in person
or by post.


>
> --
> Wm...
>
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