Posting invoices

[Geert Janssens]

Found this while browsing through my old list mails. I didn't see a 
reply so here's a rather overdue one...

On Friday 05 December 2014 14:24:42 Rodney Lynn wrote:
> Hi,
> I use Gnucash for the accounts of my small business.
> I invoice and my clients pay in euros or sterling. So I have the
> following accounts:Sales (EURSales (GBP)Accounts receivable
> (EUR)Accounts receivable (GBP) When I post invoices in Euros
> everything works fine. When I select the Euro invoice and Post it,
> the 'Post to account' in the dialogue box appears as Assets:Current
> assets: Accounts receivable (EUR).However, when I select the GBP
> invoice and Post it, the account in the 'Post to account' option in
> the dialogue box appears as Assets:Current assets: Accounts
> receivable (EUR) and I am unable to change it. When I use the scroll
> button at the end of the box I cannot access the Assets:Current
> assets:Accounts receivable account or any other account. I have tried
> deleting the Accounts receivable (GBP) from the table of accounts and
> generating it using the New option in the Post dialogue box, but this
> does not work. I have checked the Show Hidden accounts option in the
> accounts tree; again no success. I am using the latest release of
> Gnucash 2.6.4 the copy built from git rev 79bdcf1+ on
> 2014-10-112.6.4. If anyone has any suggestions I wouldreally
> appreciate the help. Rodney
> 
Some general background on how multi-currency invoicing works in 
GnuCash:

Invoices are always created in the currency of the customer. So if your 
customer's currency is EUR, that's what the invoice currency will be as 
well. In addition, invoices will always be posted to an A/R account in 
the invoice's currency (and hence the customer's currency).

So if your customer's currency is EUR you will only be shown A/R 
accounts in EUR to post to.

You *could* have entries on the invoice that map to accounts in 
different currencies (like GBP). For each of these entries you will be 
asked a conversion rate between EUR and GBP during the posting process.

The *payment* currency is yet completely independent of this. You can 
send an invoice in EUR, which your customer may choose to pay in GBP. 
That is handled by the payment dialog. Again there you will be asked for 
a conversion rate if necessary. [1]

I'm not sure what you did exactly that you didn't get the result you 
were expecting. If you say you "post and invoice in GBP", does that mean 
you created an invoice with entries in GBP accounts or is that an 
invoice for a customer with GBP as customer currency ?

Regards,

Geert

[1] One important caveat: there was a bug in this area that was fixed 
for gnucash 2.6.7. So be sure to update to that version if you want to 
be able to process payments in a currency different from the invoice 
currency.