how do I enter a customer pre-payment

[Derek Atkins]

John,

"John R. Sowden" <jsowden at americansentry.net> writes:

> There are two kinds of acct rec systems: open item and balance
> forward. GC seems to be an open item type.  All payments are assigned
> to an invoice.  In bal fwd, which is what we use, payments apre
> applied to the balance, not to specific items, so a -pre-payment' is
> shown as a credit to the account.  When a charge is applied (not
> necessarily an invoice), the balance is increased.  Typically the open
> item type is used for widget sellers (distributors, etc.), while the
> balance forward type is used for phone, electricity service, or as in
> my case, alarm service.

Actually, GnuCash is somewhere in the middle..  Historicaly you applied
a payment to a Customer.  The Invoice splits where there to make the
reports work (and to keep better track of what is still "outstanding".
This has obviously changed over time.

> John

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
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