Handling Debit Opening Balances for Customers

[Nelson Handcock]

Hi Geert,

Thanks for your responses.

On my version of GN, your proposal does not work if there is no invoice in
existence for the customer.

When I choose the Business -> Customer -> Process Payment:
 I select the customer name, (there is no invoice for the customer so
nothing shows up in the "Documents" list), enter the amount, choose the
Opening Balances account. There is a yellow warning icon and the "OK"
button is greyed out.

When I hover my mouse of the warning icon, I see a message "You must select
at least one document or pre-payment to process".


If you are seeing something different please advise - perhaps I need to
upgrade to a newer version of GN?



Thanks & Regards,

Nelson Handcock
0409 149919

http://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsonhandcockaustralia

On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 10:47 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be
> wrote:

> Hi Nelson,
>
>
>
> See answers in between.
>
>
>
> On Sunday 13 September 2015 18:17:46 Nelson Handcock wrote:
>
> > Hi Folks,
>
> >
>
> > Using GN 2.6.3...I haven't upgraded fr a while but then again I'm not
>
> > sure the current version is quite stable based on the number of
>
> > threads talking about various upgrade issues....
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > I'm in the process of transferring customer balances from previous
>
> > year to next financial year.
>
> >
>
> > I've decided to start a new gnucash file because the current one is
>
> > too big - it takes several minutes to open or run a report due to the
>
> > number of transactions.
>
> >
>
> > My new file has been built by exporting and importing the account
>
> > tree, and by loading up the customers using the import utility.
>
> >
>
> > I've created an "Opening Balances" asset account, so that I can enter
>
> > the closing balances from the old file - no problems. Some values are
>
> > where the customer has a credit balance and some are where the
>
> > customer owes money (a Debit amount).
>
>
>
> You probably shouldn't be entering these values manually. See below.
>
> >
>
> > To get these balances to show up on the customer report I have to use
>
> > the "assign as Payment" function. I have learned that I have to have
>
> > an invoice to select to do this - some customers don't have an
>
> > invoice in the new financial year so I create one to use and then
>
> > unpost it later on.
>
> >
>
> That looks a bit like a detour to me. You could open
>
> Business-Customer-Process Payment and immediately enter a new payment for
> the customer (debit or credit) and "pay" it against your opening balances
> account. There's no need to first issue an invoice for that as far as I
> know. Via this method you can enter both debit and credit amounts for a
> customer.
>
>
>
> > What I've noticed is that where the customer has a Debit opening
>
> > balance, if I try to use the "Assign as Payment" then the pop-up
>
> > screen assumes that I'm trying to assign a payment to a Vendor, and I
>
> > therefore can't use the function at all because I'm trying to assign
>
> > a debit to a customer.
>
> >
>
> > The only way around it is to use the "Pay Invoice" function and enter
>
> > the amount as a refund, and post it to the Opening Balances account.
>
> > Nothing really wrong with that, except that it take a number of extra
>
> > steps to run the customer report, open the invoice, choose the "Pay
>
> > Invoice" option...compared to assigning as payment where the pay
>
> > invoice pop-up comes straight up and I can enter the customer name,
>
> > choose the account and bam - done.
>
> >
>
> Would Business-Customer-Process Payment be a sufficient improvement in
> this case ?
>
>
>
> >
>
> > I'm wondering if this is something that could be fixed - so that when
>
> > the "assign as payment" feature is used, you can select either a
>
> > vendor or a customer.
>
> >
>
> > I'm happy to submit a formal development request if people think it's
>
> > something that should/could be looked at by the developers?
>
> >
>
>
>
> There has been discussion in the past over the limits of the assign as
> payment option. I agree it would make sense if it were smarter and there is
> already an enhancement request for this [1].
>
>
>
> For your specific use case it appears to me the Business-Customer-Process
> Payment route is as efficient as assign as payment (though you could have
> saved some time by not entering the opening balances manually first and
> will have to remove these manually entered transactions again).
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Geert
>
>
>
>
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=719904
>