Invoice & Bill Posting Date Issues Across Multiple Periods

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Tue Dec 12 11:32:09 EST 2017


Hi,

Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com> writes:

> I noticed something about the business features that isn’t working as
> expected, or at least not optimally.
>
> When entering a bill or invoice, each line item allows you to put a date.
>
> When posting that bill or invoice, only the posting date is used - not
> the individual line-item dates.
>
> While I can see that this behavior might make sense to most people, it
> seems to me to be a carry-over from the days of paper ledgers that is
> very inefficient.

Not at all.  All the invoice data (inluding line-item date, description,
etc) is all "metadata" in terms of your Chart of Accounts.  When you
post the invoice, GnuCash totals up the amount and posts the invoice
totals into your CoA.  Of course this happens at the "Post Date" --
that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

There is a "newer" feature that tells the posting not the accumulate
splits.  This will map each line-item into a single split (instead of
accumulating all line-items that go to the same account into a single
split).  However, because a transaction only has one date associated
with it, that date is the post date.

I don't see how this is inefficient.

[snip]
> The same is possible for invoicing your customers. It is entirely
> possible to invoice a customer for work done in a previous period (or
> multiple previous periods - such as job-based billing) and not receive
> payment for it till much later.

This is true.  This is the difference between accrual and cash
accounting.  The Business Features are 100% accrual.

> GnuCash has no issue with letting you post bills and invoices
> independent of actual money exchange. (the whole purpose of the
> business features) But it seems it does not allow you to recognize
> revenue and expenses in their proper periods.

This is true.  See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95700

> Am I missing something?

15 years of history.  ;)

> Regards,
> Adrien

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-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
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