Process payment of employee vouchers

[Derek Atkins]

iulian dragos <jaguarul at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 6:14 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>    
>     iulian dragos <jaguarul at gmail.com> writes:
>    
>     > Hi,
>     >
>     > I am using Gnucash to manage a small business. We often have employee
>     > expenses that need to be reimbursed, but I can't find a way to associate
>     an
>     > employee voucher to an actual payment *that was imported from my bank*.
>     >
>     > - I see the employee voucher expense in Accounts Payable
>     > - I download and import statements from the bank
>     > - the payment appears in my Checking Account
>    
>     What is the "other account" from the transaction you imported?  My guess
>     is that you're assigning it to an Expense account instead of your A/P
>     account.
>
> Initially it is called "Imbalance-CHF", I guess that's the default when
> importing bank transactions. I then set it manually to A/P.

It's only the "default" when you fail to properly assign the target
account during the import session.  You should assign it during import.

>
>     If you assign it to your A/P account you can then assign it to the
>     Employee.
>    
>     > Here's what I tried:
>     >
>     > - right-click and "Assign as Payment" on the imported transaction. This
>     > dialog will try to find a "Vendor", not employees, so I can't select the
>     > voucher
>     > - "Process payments". This adds a new transaction in my checking account
>     so
>     > now I have two for the same sum
>     > - Manually set the imported transaction to "Accounts Payable". However,
>     > this does not associate it to the expense voucher, and the "Bills due
>     > reminder" keeps showing the payed vouchers.
>     >
>     > What is the best way to handle such payments? Maybe of note: these
>     vouchers
>     > usually have several entries for different expense accounts.
>    
>     It's POSSIBLE that even after you assign the transaction to A/P that
>     Assign as Payment might not allow you to assign to an employee.  In that
>
> That's indeed the case. Do you think this is a bug that I should report, or
> simply the way it's supposed to work?

I don't know -- I didn't write this code.  I SUSPECT it was an
oversight, so I would suggest you file a bug report.

>     case, you will have to change your work flow.  Specifically, you will
>     need to process payment for the employee (adding the transaction into
>     your Checking account), and then import the account *after* that and
>     mark the payment as a duplicate.
>
> I'll try this approach, though I prefer to start with the "truth" coming from
> the bank. That way I am sure I don't forget to pay it, and it seems to work
> well for bills and invoices.

Ah, so you blindly trust your bank never to make mistakes?  (I say this
as someone who actually FOUND a bank error becuase my records didn't
match theirs and I noticed during reconciliation)

Only create the transaction when you actually issue the payment; that
way you wont forget to pay it.  I.e., enter it into your books when you
write/send the check, or when you enter it into your bank's bill-pay, or
whatever other method you use to send the money.

> Thanks,
> iulian

-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