[GNC] how to link an expense (a tax) to a invoice being issued

[Mattia Rizzolo]

Hi people!

With the disclaimer that I'm keeping these books for myself, as I'm not
required by law to keep them at all, here I come ask you about this
specific tax.

Also, this turned quite longer than I thought it would, actually while
writing my thoughts cleared quite a bit... :)  Guess that's a kind of
"rubber duck debugging"!
For the quicker version go straight to below where I describe my case in
way more practical terms.



Background:
When I issue an invoice I may (or may not) have to pay a 2€ duty stamp
and attach it to the invoice.  That's an effect specific to the fact
that I produced a document, and I also need to attach such duty stamp
to credit notes, for example.
Now, if I do a paper invoice, I most likely already bought weeks/months
prior a stash of those duty stamps.  Instead, if I'm doing an electronic
invoice, the payment for those stamp is deferred to the next quarter.
Furthermore, I may or may not (my choice) bill the customer for the
expense of this duty stamp.

So I am a bit lost on how to properly account for this thing.  To me is
an expense, that may or may not be charged back to the customer, but I
would also like to gather data on, like, how many invoices I'm issuing
that I am not billing the duty stamp on, so I wouldn't like to "hide"
them into some random expense/income account.
The different methods of actual payment of them (in advance or
postponed) surely doesn't help make it straightforward.

Probably the hardest part is that I would really like to tie the expense
to each invoice.  I have no clue if there even is a way to do that, but
it doesn't seem like there is one.  Handling invoices through the
GnuCash invoice system makes it impossible to me to add random splits,
is there even a chance I could do this?
If not, guess I would be stuck creating a separate transaction manually
each time I issue an invoice.  (in the below examples, I'm referring
specifically to the two splits that invoice Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps) and
simply "linking" that expense to the invoice by the memo field.





To clarify and recap, here was my thinking:


1. The accounts (simplified naming, I have a deeper tree):
                                    Balance
   Assets:Banks:Checking            500.00
   Assets:Cash                       50.00
   Assets:AR                          0.-
   Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps            0.-
   Income:Invoices                    0.-
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre     2.00-
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post    0.-

   I decided to separate the Pre and Post variant of duty stamps since
   they are after all handled completely differently and stashing them
   in a single account would only create confusion later on IMHO.

2. When I buy "paper duty stamps" (that can only be bought in cash…):
                                        Debit       Credit      Balance
   Assets:Cash                                        2.00        48.00
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre         2.00                     4.00-

   Here the Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre represents a sort of prepaid
   expense, resulting in a credit for me, which is hence recorded as a
   negative liability.

3. When I issue an electronic invoice for which I am *not* charging the
   customer:
                                        Debit       Credit      Balance
   Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps                2.00                    2.00
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post                    2.00        2.00

   This is what I would love to have in my invoice posting transaction
   (the one that also bears A/R and Income), but that I fear my just
   simply not be possible.

4. When I issue an electronic invoice for which I am charging it back:
                                        Debit       Credit      Balance
   Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps                2.00                    4.00
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post                    2.00        4.00
   Assets:AR                              2.00                    2.00
   ??????????                                         2.00

   To what should I match that AR?  It ought to be some kind of Income,
   but I am not really sure, it's not really an income is it?  It feels
   constrained to use Income:Invoices.  I was half-thinking to match it
   against Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps (similarly to what one would do with
   credit card rebates), but GnuCash won't let me do that from within an
   invoice.  Or am I looking at this from the wrong side and I should
   just get an Income:TaxCollection kind of account?

5. When I issue a paper invoice, not claiming back the duty stamp:
                                        Debit       Credit      Balance
   Expenses:Tax:DutyStamps                2.00                    6.00
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Pre                     2.00        2.00-

   And there follows the rest of the invoice; like with case 3, beside
   this magic linking that I would love to have with these 2 splits and
   the actual invoice, I think nothing more is needed.

6. For the paper invoice claiming back the duty stamp, it should be like
   case 4 with the :Pre account, nothing else.

7. When I go to settle the postponed duty stamp and the end of the
   quarter I suppose I'll simply do:
                                        Debit       Credit      Balance
   Liabilities:Tax:DutyStamps:Post        4.00                    0.00
   Assets:Banks:Checking                               4.00      496.00

   And be done.



Am I in the right direction?  Do you spot anything totally wrong?  And
how would you handle these details I'm unsure about?

Thank you in advance for any thought and input you might be able to give
to me! :)

-- 
regards,
                        Mattia Rizzolo

GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18  4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540      .''`.
More about me:  https://mapreri.org                             : :'  :
Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri                  `. `'`
Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia  `-
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