[GNC] Keeping tenant accounts on Gnucash - periodic 'rent owing' ?

[Adrien Monteleone]

On 3/7/22 5:06 AM, flywire wrote:
An invoice must be prepared
> for every rent due transaction and the payment processed. 
The 'preparing' is only the first time. After that, you just hit 
'Duplicate' and enter the new posting date.

'Processing Payment' is how you apply a specific payment to a specific 
invoice. It is also very little work. If importing actual payments from 
the bank, then one need 'Assign as Payment' after import. The process is 
otherwise the same.

That's an
> incredible amount of manual processing for a simple schedule when, for
> example, dates must be entered for invoices without seeing a list of
> current invoices

I'm not sure what you mean by 'must be entered without seeing a current 
list'. If you are charging next months/weeks rent, you know the due 
date. You don't need a list of previous due dates. But if you want one, 
that exists too. It is called 'Bills Due Reminder' and there is one for 
AR and one for AP. And you can keep that window open so you can always 
see at a glance which rental invoices haven't been paid.

and payment amounts without seeing the deposit in the
> bank account. 
If they haven't been received they shouldn't be entered. That's the same 
with cash or accrual. But once received, you have the money, so either 
manually enter a payment, or 'Process Payment' depending on method.

Especially so when tenant deposit dates and amounts don't
> match invoices.

The Process Payment/Assign Payment window shows you which rental 
invoices haven't been paid. You get to choose which one to apply it to. 
And precisely because they won't match, the Business Features help you 
keep track of which applies to which. The Customer Report can even show 
you a column with that detail so you and the tenant can see which rent 
periods were paid and on what dates with which payments.
> 
> Every manual process is a risk and eventually, an error occurs. For me,
> GnuCash would work well for your rental accounting but the process is too
> complex involving too much risk just using the features of GnuCash to
> produce a rental statement. In time I'd be interested to know what you
> settle on.

I'd be interested to.

And please don't mistake my above comments. I'm not trying to stump for 
a particular method. I just want to clear up what I see are 
misconceptions about the workload involved or how the features work that 
I've observed and experienced while using them.

I do agree with your observation, the Guide could maybe use some 
attention in this matter. Better still, the Wiki is a great place for 
such 'use case' tutorials. I have some other Wiki stuff on the back 
burner, but once I get that out of the way, I might see about adding a 
page for this type of situation with screenshots. (if someone doesn't 
beat me to it)

Regards,
Adrien