[GNC] Account Payable: process payment to multiple vendors

[Geert Janssens]

Op zaterdag 10 april 2021 16:03:35 CEST schreef Bregt - ICTgroup.be via gnucash-user:
> Hello everyone.
> 
> I am wondering what to do with the following. (For the record: I live in
> Belgium and use GnuCash for my company bookkeeping).
> 
> I received a bill in January from my notary, registered it in Gnucash (2
> expenses with VAT + 2 expenses without VAT versus Account Payable) and
> registered the payment (Account Payable versus Bank).
> 
> Now, part of this bill was a provisionary cost that did not include VAT.
> Recently I received a second bill from the government for this
> provisionary cost, this time with VAT. What (apparantly) happened is
> that the notary transferred my payment for this cost to the federal
> government, and now the government sends me the bill so I can recover
> the VAT on this expense.
> So: total cost is (say for example) €121. This was booked on an expense
> account. What I would do if I were keeping oldfashion books on paper is
> booking the second bill as expense €100 + VAT €21 versus Account Payable
> €121, and then Account Payable €121 versus (previously booked) expense
> €121.
> However, when I want to process payment of the second bill in GnuCash,
> it does not allow me to select an Expense account.
> 
> Therefore, I have done the following:
> * I removed the expense from the original bill, removed the payment of
> the original bill, reregistered payment of the original bill (now with a
> lower amount ofcourse, and pointing to the relevant entry in my bank
> account statement).
> * I registered the second bill and registered its payment, refering to
> the entry in my bank account statement.
> 
> Now I am wondering if there is a way in GnuCash to process a payment of
> two bills from two separate vendors in one transaction, because on my
> bank account statement one can only see the payment to the first vendor
> (the notary).
> 
> Any thoughts on this?

Unfortunately the business features of gnucash won't allow this directly. A payment and bill 
have to have the same owner.

There is however a way to model this manually to be slightly closer to the actual situation.

What you want to express is that in the bank account register only a single payment 
happened to a single vendor, however part of that payment was meant for another bill you 
still have to receive at that moment. That amount can be assigned to an asset account that 
collects prepayments.

So I would propose to
* create an asset account named "Vendor prepayments"
* pay the notary bill (with lowered amount) via the Process Payment dialog.
* open the notary payment in your bank account register in split view
* adjust the bank account split to be the total amount you effectively paid
* assign the imbalance to the new "Vendor prepayments" account

Then when you want to pay the bill you received from the government, pay it from the 
"Vendor prepayments" account.

After that step, all bills should be paid properly and the "Vendor prepayment" account should 
have a 0 balance again.

Regards,

Geert