[GNC] Commission sales

[R. Victor Klassen]

> On Jan 14, 2021, at 10:48 AM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
> 
> The usual "I am not an accountant and this is not accounting advice" applies here. The following is simply how *I* would approach this:
> 
And I’m not really asking about accounting, more the GnuCash mechanisms.

> Some questions would need to be answered first.
> 
> Are you taking possession of the goods from your neighbor, or is this just a consignment type operation? (meaning, do you have any financial or legal interest in the goods, can you walk away with them, or can they take them back with no issue?) I understand this might be quite an informal arrangement, but unless you are buying the goods from the neighbor, I wouldn't think there is an occasion for entering a bill for them.

The mechanism looks like this: customer orders from our online store (typically) some items of ours and some of the neighbour’s.  Branding is clear on the store.  Twice a week we deliver orders.  On that day or the one before, we inform the neighbour what they need to supply (we have no inventory of theirs - they are responsible for informing us how much we can sell) and they bring it over.  We pay in cash the amount the customer will pay us, less a percentage.  The customer has already paid us through the online store. 

Where it starts to look like bills and invoices is that the online ordering system provides us with what can be (fairly) easily converted (perl script) into an importable invoice.  But the online system, being 3rd party, has no idea that we have a mix of sales out of our inventory and commission sales, so the invoice contains both.

> 
> I would think a holding/suspense liability account for the funds collected on behalf of the neighbor would work, named something like 'Sales-Payable'. (similar concept to sales tax collection) The full amount collected from the end customer drops here first from their invoice. (posted against AR, which itself is reduced as the end customer pays you.)
> 
> Result: Dr. AR, Cr. Liabilities:Sales-Payable

I was aware that I could not enter an expense account in an invoice, but hadn’t realized that liabilities accounts were permitted.

> 
> Do a manual transaction periodically or each time, reducing the holding account balanced against an income account. (Dr. Sales-Payable, Cr. Income:Commission)
> 

This looks somewhat cleaner than having an expense amount that later gets re-characterized.
Cleaner yet would be putting an income entry in a bill, but that’s not permitted.

> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
> 
> On 1/13/21 12:09 PM, R. Victor Klassen wrote:
>> Since early in the pandemic we’ve been selling some of our neighbour’s stuff, charging a few percent commission, mostly to cover credit card fees.
>> Our income here is really just the commission since the end customer knows it isn’t ours and we aren’t providing any value add othe than facilitating the order and delivery process.
>> The only way I have figured out to account using the business features is to enter an invoice to the end customer and a bill for the full amount from the neighbour.  Then I have to hack around in the income and expense accounts to make the difference between the two show up as commission.
>> This is because I can’t put an income account in a bill.
>> Is there a more elegant way of handling this?
> 
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