Lot links

[Geert Janssens]

On Sunday 08 November 2015 17:05:35 Chris Harris wrote:
> I am currently using the latest version 2.6.9  I have used the
> business functions for many years.  Many of my invoices show
> prepayments, although no customer has ever made a prepayment.  They
> have made partial payments.  I have run the check and repair several
> times.  If I view the lots in my a/r account, there are many entries.
> 
"Pre-payment" is used as a general term meaning a payment that is not 
associated with any invoice (yet).
Having many lots is not a sign of trouble in itself. It is normal to 
have many lots in your a/r account. Even without lot link transactions, 
each payment gets put into a lot together with the invoice it pays.

Unfortunately check & repair has only limited capabilities to correct 
superfluous use of lot link transactions. So it may be necessary to 
manually correct some invoice/payment relations.

> While researching this I read a comment that these are not needed
> unless you offset an invoice with a credit note.

That's true in the strictest sense. However if they *were* used to 
record a given payment, removing the lot link transaction will also 
break the only link gnucash has between the invoice and the payment.

> So my question is,
> Is it OK for me to manually delete all of the lot links?  Will this
> mark my old invoices as unpaid?

It will mark your old invoices as unpaid and will create a lot of pre-
payments as well.

That may be the first step to clean up though as from there on you can 
re-assign the "pre-payments" properly to your invoices again.

For more info on how to deal with lot link transactions post 2.6.6, look 
at this wiki page:
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Correcting_Business_Transaction_Mistakes

Regards,

Geert