[GNC] Business Account Set Up Question & Customer Billing Question

[Adrien Monteleone]

Welcome to GnuCash!

Capital Equity investments should be like so:

Dr. Assets:Checking
Cr. Equity:Paid-in-capital:Partner A/B

Or using some similar accounts. You want to record the receipt of an asset, and you want to balance that against a specific partner’s equity.

Opening balances are for when you have a balance pre-existing from older books (or no books) for a particular account.

If you do this for both initial investments, Equity should show 1440 total paid-in.

The client re-billing issue however is a different matter.

There is a ‘jobs’ feature in GnuCash, but it is very limited at the moment. Each vendor can have only one job. So if you buy ‘parts’ or multiple items on the same invoice from a single vendor and then in some fashion, direct, recombined, or further process or manufacture, you can’t tie that job to multiple clients.

That would be more of an inventory system and GnuCash doesn’t have that at present. (and may not, its purpose is to be an accounting system, not inventory control, point of sale, etc cetera, but external modules are possible, just no one has written this yet.)

At the very least you could use a spreadsheet for tracking what to bill customers, but I’m sure there is better software out there to handle the task. You’d then import the resulting transaction into GnuCash for the accounting.

Sorry, I know that wasn’t the answer you were looking for.

It might be possible, using either directly entered transactions, downloaded transactions from a card issuer, or maybe even via invoices to ’tag’ transactions or splits for particular customers. (likely using the Description, Notes or Memo fields) You can then use this to generate a transaction report that can be used to then bill customers — not simple, I know.

But if that’s the present hangup/issue, be patient and ask for more help specifically on those points and someone will be able to guide you through.

If you are using one of the SQL backends (sqlite3 has the lowest barrier for new users) you have the option of using SQL queries on the data directly outside of  GnuCash or via something called PieCash which gives a python scripting interface to those backends. (without having to learn SQL) This way, you could run a python script or SQL query to create a CSV of the needed items to be re-billed, even including your markup, all generated in a format to be imported directly into GnuCash as an invoice that you can track in GnuCash and print/send to your client. This is probably the most likely solution for you though others may offer other suggestions.

Just remember NOT to *write* back to the database using SQL for the foreseeable future. GnuCash is not yet a ‘full’ database driven application. Use the importers for bringing in data you don’t want to enter directly.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Aug 21, 2018, at 9:31 PM, Khristine Ann Ramella <kisspk at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> OK, so trying to use gnu for business. Have a two person llc. I set up the equity accounts like shown based on all the research on gnuhelp and general accounting I could find.
> 
> Each member contributed 720 to start the business. The first person 720 was put in checking immediately. I put it under Opening Balances and sent it to checking. So far so good. The second 720 came in a month later. When I go to make the deposit to the checking account how do categorize it?
> 
> Also, why does Equity only show as 740 ? Shouldn't it be 1440 to represent the 720 from each member?
> 
> [cid:image001.jpg at 01D4399E.B10A5F50]
> 
> I also have a billing question. When I enter a credit card charge or checking account debit, I want to be able to assign a customer & their specific job  to the purchase. We buy & bill out a lot of supplies for each client-most with an upcharge so it isn't an even swap. In  Qbooks you can just check a box and assign the purchase or invoice to the customer job, so I can see expenses versus billing right away for the customer and their job. I did some gnusearch on this and didn't really get a clear cut answer.
> 
> I would hate to have to go back to QB but this is a deal breaker-lots of parts for each customer and each customer has lots of jobs (installs/service calls)
> 
> Thanks so much for your expertise!!!
> 
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