Invoice Payment Problem, + A/R question

[W Geoffrey O Black]

On Mar 8, 2014, at 1:51 AM, Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:

> On Friday 07 March 2014 12:54:34 W Geoffrey O Black wrote:
> >
> > I’ve run into an issue with invoices and payments that I
> > can’t seem to resolve. Since upgrading to 2.6.1,
> > when I create an invoice report (Reports—Business—Fancy Invoice), it
> > ONLY works if the invoice number I select is an unpaid invoice. As
> > soon as I choose an invoice number that has payments associated with
> > it, I get the message "An error occurred while running the report.”
> > The error message goes away if I uncheck the box to display payments,
> > but that really doesn’t help me, as I want the payments included on
> > the invoice I print!
> > 
> > Can anyone tell me why this is happening and what I can do to fix it?
>  
> Hi Geoffrey,
>  
> This was a bug in GnuCash 2.6.1 and has been fixed in the just released 2.6.2.

Thanks for the quick reply, Geert. Just downloaded 2.6.2, and indeed, problem solved! Gosh, I like it when the bugs I come across have already been discovered and fixed. Makes life easy for me.

> > A second question which may or may not be related: I have noticed that
> > since upgrading to 2.6.1, when I process a payment, it creates two
> > separate transactions in Accounts Receivable: one labeled “Payment,”
> > one labeled “Lot Link” (with the memo line "Internal link between
> > invoice and payment lots”). Is this a new behavior introduced in 2.6?
> > And what is the purpose of it? This “link” type of transaction never
> > showed up when I was using 2.4. I am willing to put up with it if
> > it’s doing something useful, but it’s annoying to have extra
> > “transactions” that don’t affect the balance cluttering up the A/R
> > register.
> > 
> Lot links were introduced to allow handling of credit notes and more flexible payment options. They are plainly visible because the accounts payable register was never intended for direct user manipulation/consultation. However you are not the first to trip over them. It's on my list to try and reduce its use to a minimum.

I understand that the A/R register is not meant for direct manipulation, and I am careful not to make changes when viewing it. I guess I had not realized it was not even meant to be consulted. Sometimes when I need to review a transaction and I know it was simple and recent, it seems more convenient to simply open Accounts Receivable and view it there, rather than searching for it through the Find Customer or Find Invoice interface. It’s not like I have any complaints about those interfaces—I’m just not in the habit of using them every time. I reckon I will quickly get in the habit of using them if I have to sift through “dummy” transactions to find what I’m looking for in the register, though. Again, if the lot links are serving a useful function, I don’t mind changing my workflow to account for their presence.

I am curious to know a bit more about the use of “lots” in GnuCash overall. I’m not sure I understand the term. Other than the “lot links,” the only direct reference to lots I have noticed as a user is “View Lots…” under the Actions menu. This brings up a dialog I can’t make much sense of (and therefore haven’t played with at all). Is there any documentation explaining what this is for or how to use it? If this is a function not intended for the average user, I will happily go on ignoring it, but stumbling across it (when searching through the menus for something else) has piqued my curiosity.

Thanks Again,
Geoffrey