[GNC] business Accounts Payable questions

[Adrien Monteleone]

> On Jan 9, 2019, at 3:44 PM, Tim Kallmer <tkallmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> i'm new to using GC for business.
> 
> i don't understand the format and behavior Accounts Payable account. can
> you explain the 'Ty' column that starts with '?', then toggles between 'I'
> and 'P'? are these 'type', 'invoiced', and 'paid'? can you explain why the
> due date cell cannot be edited in 'I' mode?

Yes, the column is ’Type’, if you expand the width you’ll see the full label. Yes, P & I are for ‘Payment’ and ‘Invoice’. (‘Bills’ are also listed as ‘Invoices’ but in the A/R account) The ? is only on empty transactions. (which you should not be creating manually)

You can edit the due date cell, but not directly. You have to edit the bill or invoice, which will require unposting and reposting to change the date.

> 
> my small business doesn't have goods and vendor bills, or employees and
> expense vouchers. is Accounts Payable able to have transactions entered
> manually rather through bills or vouchers?

Then you probably don’t need to use the business features.

You can create a generic liability account and call it “Accounts Payable” and a generic asset account and call it “Accounts Receivable” if you like. *Those* generic accounts, you can manually edit, just don’t edit the default A/R and A/P accounts that were created when you turned on the business features.

You can’t (or shouldn’t) manually edit entries made in A/R or A/P using the business features of Bills, Invoices & Vouchers. You can edit payments on those, but still not wise. Better to use the payment feature to change the payment amount or what it applies to.

If you need or want to use the business features, but otherwise also want to track some payables (or receivables) manually, then create additional generic accounts and call them “Other Payables/Receivables” or whatever your CPA deems appropriate and use them for the manual transactions. Note, they can be children of the default A/R and A/P accounts if you like which will roll up their totals into the parent(s) in the Accounts tab, and on reports if you’ve chosen that option.

> 
> lastly, in trying to fiddle with A/P, i entered some temporary vendors,
> employees, and bills. is it true these cannot be deleted without somehow
> editing the XML? how would i go about deleting them?

Vendors, Customers and Employees can be edited at will. But you can’t delete them. (you can edit them to fill them with ‘dummy’ info and reuse them later)

The same goes for bills and invoices, but you can’t edit them in a posted state. You have to unpost them first.

If I errantly enter a bill or invoice, I’ll edit it to say ‘use next’ as the document number so I can find it and change the info for reuse next time I need one.

You should, dare I say, never, need to edit the XML directly. (unless you’ve been bitten by some sort of bug and that is the only sane route to recovery)

Regards,
Adrien