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

[Larry D. James]

On 07/15/2015 11:14 AM, Buddha Buck wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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 Buddha, thanks Robert.

I understand what you're saying.  My question might not have been as 
clear as intended.  I probably don't have the diction to make fully 
clear.  But a reference here and there is a great help.

I understand what both of you have said.  I have introduced Gnucash to 
one of my clients who don't have any background in accounting.  I gave 
her steps in creating customers and told her when she's needs to bill 
someone, start off by entering them in the system using the new (create) 
customer option.  Then proceed to making a new invoice for that 
customer, and eventually follow thought with adding payments to the 
invoice for the customer.

She used the words I created the new account.  I wanted to say, you 
didn't create an account, you created a customer.  I wanted to say there 
is a difference.  While I choose to refer to the difference by name.  I 
wanted more concrete ways of validating why she should call the first 
process creating customer instead of creating account (for a customer).

I realize when I go to a vendor the vendors refer to us customers as 
having an account with us.  So the customer does have an account.  I 
guess in a sense we are creating an account by the customers name. So 
while in the actually books there is some similarities, and of course 
there is the difference that you guys are mentioning, such as the 
customers are living breathing being.  But for the record, what is the 
difference when we are looking in the books.

A similar question is the fact that we have more than one data file.  
The building where I'm introducing Guncash have more than one lawyer 
there who will have separate data files.  I refer to them as different 
businesses... different data files.  She has a tendency to want to refer 
to them as different accounts.

While I understand clearly the real difference, I was looking for a good 
way to use the right nomenclature to explain this to my client.

That was the sense that I was mentioning.

Thanks again for the input.

-- L. James

-- 
L. D. James
ljames at apollo3.com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames