[GNC] Pre-Payments into Liabilities

[Adrien Monteleone]

And to add to what Stan & Gyle said,

Several years ago, I played around with pre-payments using a 
Liabilities:Customer Deposits account but that was a mess. The way the 
Business Features of GnuCash work, it is *much* easier to just Process 
Payment, letting it post to AR and then apply it later to an invoice. 
You also get a nice 'Statement of Account' with the Customer Report 
which would otherwise not reflect the pre-payment.

IF I would ever encounter the situation that I'm not going to invoice 
that customer ever again, and would have to carry the prepayment funds 
for a long period of time for some odd reason rather than issue a timely 
refund, I would then do a transfer from AR to the Liabilities:Customer 
Deposits account and handle from there. But that would be a very odd case.

Regards,
Adrien

On 9/11/22 5:51 PM, Vance Turnewitsch via gnucash-user wrote:
> Hello,
> I use GnuCash for a small school. One of our parents paid their entire tuition amount at the beginning of the year. I have been fiddling with how to record this.
> 
> We bill monthly; therefore, for the payment that doesn't have a receivable yet, shouldn't it go into a liability account? Using the "Process Payment" dialog results in an accounts receivable with a negative balance. This seems odd to me, but it has been some time since I took accounting. In GnuCash's system, is an accounts receivable with a negative balance akin to a liability?