Hayes re: I need a report

[Terri Hayes]

Derek, I think i understand your question and why your paradigm is
different from mine -and will try to explain:
What i believe i understand you to mean -is that you invoice for a product
as delivered. You get an order for a product -you deliver that number of
product and submit one or more invoices and you expect payment in full for
all invoices. To you -whats important is the total due -regardless if how
many invoices have been submitted or how many products have been delivered.
Your relationship with your recievables is about final totals -not
individual invoices.
My (and any service business) has a different relationship with our
invoices. I work *by* invoice. So on any given day i might have one to five
invoices going to one to five different companies. These companies will pay
me -By invoice (almost Never by total due from company) because i will have
provided services to one or more Departments in the company -and each of
them will pay me using different resources and at different times. So while
seeing how much a single company owes me is handy for an "in the next 30
days my income should be about "this much""... Perspective... What i need
to keep a close eye on is which individual invoices have not been paid and
when do I expect them ...
Because I send out my invoices each saturday and expect payment for that
week's invoices to arrive any time from one week to 30 days later. Having a
list showing the invoices outstanding and the day they're "due" (expected)
lets me know if i can expect money this week (and about how much) or if
there is not really anything coming in for another two or three weeks (or
when)... All of this happens long before the 30 days late time period -and
none of it can be easily seen on the customer report which basically shows
a list of every invoice and every payment and somewhere in that list are
invoices which have not yet been paid... But i dont see any way to subtotal
it or ignore paid invoices and payments received...So its really not an
easy glance to find what my current income might be at any given moment.
Thank you for asking!
Terri Hayes
On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 12:40 PM Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Terri Hayes <asl4me at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > ps - I am not a programmer - and I *am* a business owner - so I dont
> > really have the time to learn to program...
> > this kind of very basic functionality should not be this difficult -
> > I'm still reeling that the person who crated the invoice process in
> > GNUCash didn't include this as a basic report..
> > I dont get it - what kind of business doesn't need to know a list of
> > what's outstanding?
>
> A business that cares about how much a Customer owes and doesn't
> specifically care about "which invoice" was paid or not.  Which, as a
> business owner and the author of the GnuCash Business Tools, is exactly
> why it's written that way.  In the original version of the tools, you
> NEVER "paid" an invoice; only the customer.  The fact that invoices get
> "marked paid" was a side effect.  Only more recently can you actually
> specify which invoices get marked.
>
> Still, the Customer Report exists to show how much a customer owes.  And
> it will tell you which payments applied to which invoices, and give a
> running total.  Have you looked at that report?  Why, specifically, is
> that not sufficient for your (or your customer's) needs?
>
> > Thanks again for any help you can give me.
> > Terri Hayes
>
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -derek
>
> --
>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>