[GNC] Question about billing

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2023-07-01 15:23, C H wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I downloaded GNUcash a couple weeks ago and I've been gradually entering
> past data,

Hello, C H, and welcome to GnuCash!

This is a good type of question for the gnucash-user list, and you will 
find many people here ready to try and help you.

We can help you more if you give us some basic information:

  * For what are you doing bookkeeping: for your personal finances, for
    a business, for something else?
  * What version of GnuCash are you using?
  * What operating system are you using?

> … and there's something I keep running into that I'm hoping
> someone here can give me advice about. When I create bills, I frequently
> want some expenses to count to one period, and some to count to another.
> For example, when I enter a credit card bill, statements are generated
> halfway through the month. Half of expenses might be from May and the other
> half from June. The only way I've found to make expenses match the right
> period is to create two invoices. It feels like there must be a better way.

You mention "bills" and "invoices". These terms normally refer to 
GnuCash features which apply to bookkeeping for a business. But you also 
"credit card" "statements". Typically these are are entered as routine 
internal transactions of a person or business, and do not use the 
GnuCash features of "bills" and "invoices".

When you say "enter a credit card bill", do you mean that you hold a 
monthly statement for a particular credit card in your hand, and you are 
entering into GnuCash information about the purchases and payments 
charged to that credit card and listed on that statement?  If so, the 
normal way to do that is to create a GnuCash "account" corresponding to 
that credit card, and then enter each individual purchase or payment as 
a separate GnuCash "transaction" in the credit card's GnuCash "account". 
Each transaction has its own date, some in May, some in June. What you 
do with the monthly statement for the credit card is to "reconcile" it 
with your bookkeeping of the transactions, making sure that your books 
list exactly the same transactions as the statement lists. There is no 
need to use the GnuCash "bills" and "invoices" features.


> I tried entering each transaction through journal entries, but it was
> cumbersome, prone to mistakes, and then I lost the ability to view
> information about my credit card bills on the vendor report page.
>
> Is there an easier way to match expenses to the right period?

If you have not yet read the "GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide" 
<https://gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&lang=C&doc=guide>, I strongly 
recommend that you put down your statement and read that Guide first. 
See especially section 7. "Credit Cards". You might find it helpful to 
create an separate GnuCash file just for experimentation. Once you do 
the experiments to see how to enter credit card transactions into 
GnuCash using the separate file, then open your main bookkeeping file 
and do the actual data entry.

Best regards,

     —Jim DeLaHunt, from Vancouver, Canada