Is there a difference between creating a new customer and new account?

[Buddha Buck]

In GnuCash, a Customer and an Account are vastly different things, each
with their own properties and purpose within the system.

Accounts are one of the fundamental structures of GnuCash and double-entry
bookkeeping in general -- it's where "Accounting" comes from, the keeping
of accounts. An account is a record of funds related to a specific purpose
or entity, and bookkeeping keeps track of the flow of money from one
account to another. When you pay for the gasoline in your car, you are
transferring money from Assets:Cash to Expenses:Auto:Gasoline.

Customers are a feature of the business methods extension to GnuCash, and
allow you to group invoices, payments, credit notes, etc, together to refer
to one entity. You can generate customer-based reports (like statements,
invoices, etc).

Customers don't have an Account associated with them; at best, they are
linked through a chain of internal connections between Customers, Invoices,
Transactions, Splits and Accounts.

So, yes, there's a big difference between creating a new customer and a new
account.


On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 10:48 AM Larry D. James <ljames at apollo3.com> wrote:

> Is there a different in creating a new customer and new account?  If
> there is a difference, can some specify some components.
>
> Of course it might be the exact thing by a different name.
>
> Thanks.
>
> -- L. James
>
> --
> L. D. James
> ljames at apollo3.com
> www.apollo3.com/~ljames
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