On Tue, 23 May 2000 12:12:21 PDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Dylan Thurston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 12:41:31PM -0500, Richard Wackerbarth wrote:
> > This brings up a philosophical question. Should we have a separate subaccou
nt
> > for each "customer". Or is it reasonable to place all the customers into on
e
> > account?
>
> A more extreme philosophical question: should there be an account
> for each invoice? If not, how do you keep track of which invoices
> have been paid?
>
> Even in my personal finances, this comes up. For instance, I have an
> account that tracks all my security deposits; but then it's hard to
> tell which have been paid off. The right structure would really have
> an account per security deposit. Perhaps there should be some way to
> make accounts more transparent? Perhaps general ledgers are good enough
> to do this; I haven't really experimented.
A general ledger tends to try to stay with the "high level" information;
it would be traditional to track detailed information, not there, but
rather in a subsidiary journal for whatever it is that you're trying to
track.
Heading back to the old days of paper and pencil, you'd have separate
physical books [e.g. - bound bundles of paper] for each journal.
I'll suggest that this _isn't_ a big "philosophical" question; it is
rather a _personal_ question of how you prefer to manage your books.
In the "olden days," you'd have an Invoice Register. This would be
arranged in whatever manner made most sense:
-> For something simple, like payments for rent, you might have
a single _page_ where all the rents are recorded.
-> If security deposits are a particular matter for complexity,
there could be a page for each deposit, each page allowing you
to individually manage the complexity of each deposit.
I would find it moderately peculiar to need to track security deposits
to this degree of detail, but if they represent sufficiently
"heavyweight" objects in your accounting systems, it may be quite
reasonable to have a separate account for each one.
To "wax philosophical," I don't think this _is_ a matter of thorny
philosophy. If your activities require tracking security deposits
in great detail, then, by all means, set up an account for each.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
Rules of the Evil Overlord #38. "If an enemy I have just killed has a
younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them
killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring
feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age."
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