[GNC] AR Asset differen t GL codes

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Wed Apr 3 14:28:36 EDT 2019


Understood.

The invoice feature of GnuCash is only going to be able to post to a single A/R account per invoice. (I can’t even find textbook examples of doing it any other way) I don’t see how that’s going to work even if you create custom ‘other A/R’ like you have here. If you bill more than one service on any one invoice you won’t be able to post them to separate A/R accounts unless you just do manual entries. If you bill one service per invoice than you’re good to go.

You could import your invoices as regular transactions instead of importing them as invoices. That would allow you to create the split A/R entries, but if that data isn’t included in the import CSV, you’ll have to make that all up manually for each invoice, as you go. (and of course lose all customer tracking benefits of the business features)

I think the better approach might be to try to craft a report to show this info, but let GnuCash post to the single A/R account. You can do sane accounting and keep the boss happy.

Either using Scheme to run the report from within GnuCash, or switching to one of the SQL backends and grabbing the data from the outside are your choices. (Scheme is tough, I’d opt for SQL) The easiest path would be to use the SQLite3 backend. MySQL and PostgreSQL are a much more involved setup. SQlite is used by simply saving the file in that format. (and you get instant saves as a bonus)

I’d have the report query all unpaid invoices, adding the amounts for each service on the invoice as you step through them. (there certainly might be more efficient methods, but this is the basic idea)

I’d have to ask though, what happens now if a client doesn’t pay in full? How do you allocate the partial payment across the various services invoiced? (or do you send separate invoices for each service?) If you invoice multiple services to the same client on the same invoice, that could get messy to figure out real quick. At best, you’d have to opt for a simple proportional allocation as an estimation.

Maybe someone else here will chime in with some ideas, but I think relying on a custom report for that ‘paid’ info is the best route.

If you go the SQLite3 route, look into PieCash which can help with crafting the report you need.

Regards,
Adrien

p.s.—please don’t forget to copy the list on all replies - others will benefit from the discussion and might be able to offer more (or better) assistance.



> On Apr 3, 2019, at 11:07 AM, Teresa <Teresa at coba-em.com> wrote:
> 
> The reason I want to, I just started on this business. It's 5 years old, the CEO was tracking everything in excel, and wants to continues to track each item, on both the sold to and paid side..I'm trying to accommodate..
> 
> On 4/3/2019 12:03 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
>> Not sure why you’d want to do that. If you’re using separate income accounts to track your sales, that should be sufficient. (I also offer IT services and have separate revenue accounts for each one)
>> 
>> A/R is just one big pile. It shouldn't need to be separated. GnuCash does track however who owes you what and for which invoices. You can see that by running a customer report and/or a receivables aging report. I suppose if you really need to see that you’re still owed $x for a particular service offered, you can either make up a report to do so, or if you are using one of the SQL backends, you can query the db for the info from A/R and the invoices. Sounds like a lot of work for little actionable information.
>> 
>> Did a CPA counsel to have separate A/R accounts by revenue stream? Some software (like for banks) keep separate accounts per customer, but I’ve never heard of separate A/R accounts per revenue source. You could pull it off, but you’d have to by-pass the business features entirely and make *all* of your entries manually.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
>> 
>> 
>>> On Apr 3, 2019, at 10:36 AM, Teresa <Teresa at coba-em.com>
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Are business does not have any products, we're an IT company the sells services
>>> 
>>> Under assets and income I have 5 different products, I see when preparing an invoice I can choose the income gl#, how can I assign the AR side to a specific corresponding GL account#?
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 
>>> Teresa Slack



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