See what payments apply to which bills

[Geert Janssens]

On Tuesday 22 December 2015 08:43:44 Webmaster wrote:
> I can't seem to find out which payment was used to pay a particular
> bill.
> 
Hi Webmaster,

I'll add some comments and suggestions below.

> I can find and view the bill, but no payment information shows up.
> I can see that it is paid when I search for it, but no payment number
> (such as the check# I entered) shows in the list, nor a payment date.
> I can view a report for that vendor to see a list of all bills and
> payments, but there is nothing indicating which payment applies to
> which bill. (this process is quite cumbersome as are many of the
> business features. It takes entirely too many clicks to get to
> information that should be readily available. I had to figure out
> first that I needed a vendor overview in order to run a vendor
> report)
> I can look at the AP and checking account registers and I see the
> bills and payments but again, no indication which bill any particular
> payment is for.
> I even tried viewing lots, but that didn't help.

Lots will show you, if you know where to look. The lot viewer is not intended for that purpose 
though.
> 
> When I make payments, I'm entering a check number and choosing
> specific bills to apply that payment to. Yet after payment is made, I
> find no way to see that information anywhere. This is particularly an
> issue when I receive account statements from vendors and I want to
> verify that certain bills on it have been paid. Knowing which check
> was issued for that particular bill, I can see if it cleared my bank
> and inform their AR department of the discrepancy. Using the payment
> amount is not always possible because we frequently bundle bills and
> pay them with a single check, or pay from statements. Vendors who
> offer discounts also usually report the original amount on their
> statements, yet my checks are for the discounted amount, so that will
> never match. I guess this isn't a big deal for people who write a
> handful of checks each month, but as soon as you get to several dozen
> a week, not having easy access to this info is an issue. I can't
> imagine how a company issuing hundreds or thousands of checks a month
> manages to reconcile and verify everything.

They probably wouldn't be using gnucash in the first place, which is a tool for personal 
accounting and small businesses :)

> Perhaps I'm just not
> looking in the right place. Any help would be appreciated.
> 
> Or maybe this feature does not yet exist?

It does exist: open any invoice report on your bill(s) and modify it to display the payments for 
that bill.

I do agree this is not the most obvious place to look for it and still not really efficient. Where 
would you have expected to find this information ?

I'll add that most accounting packages I have used for my own business are equally vaque with 
regards to which payment was for which bill. It seems to me accounting is more concerned 
with the net balance for a vendor than for specific bills individually.

And I believe the business features in gnucash were originally written from that mindset.

> 
> I do see that I can enter a memo, and as a test when I paid a bill, I
> entered the invoice # there and now, when I look at the vendor report
> or register, it shows up. One would think if you have to select a
> bill to mark it as paid, GC would tag the payment with the bill
> number(s) for reference automatically.

Gnucash does it the other way around via lots. A lot unambiguously ties one bill to one or more 
payments. If you pay multiple bill with one payment, there will be as many lots as there have 
been bill paid.

> It would also be helpful when
> searching for a bill, that the listing contained additional columns
> for payment number and payment date if the bill is paid. That would
> save the several steps of having to run a vendor overview first and
> then a vendor report for a particular vendor and then trying to match
> up payments.

This all assumes there will only be one payment associated with a bill. That's not necessarily so 
in GnuCash. One bill can be paid by several (smaller) payments. So one can't just to add that 
one single payment number in a column in the search results all the time.

And in case multiple payments were used to pay a bill, which date would make sense as "the 
payment date" ? The first payment, or the last one ?

And finally there may also be bills that are only paid partially at some moment in time. How 
should gnucash treat these ? Paid, unpaid ? With a payment date or not yet ?

While the initial suggestions are a good start, some more thought is required before this would 
make sense. (And someone should still be available to actually implement it of course).
> 
> If there is a better place to make a feature request, please advise.

Strictly speaking we do have a place for feature requests:
http://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/
I will admit this forum is getting less attention than it really deserves (also from me :(  )

So for initial discussion I would propose the gnucash-devel mailing list.