Mike or Penny Novack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Oh dear, making me sorry I ever brought the issue up. Look, I'm not an > accountant but have worked on systems that have to record billings and > payments. > > Yes, some businesses do put "suspense" money into a separate bank > account (asset side of the ledger). But when I used the word > "suspense" I wasn't thinking about bank accounts but accounting > accounts (see the word "account" gets used in multiple ways). That > sense of "suspense" would be a liability type account to represent > that this check was deposited into one of the businesses bank accounts > (asset) but the money, or at least this portion of it is owed back to > somebody pending disposition and so is a liability. > > What the disposition ultimately is not YET specified. Once that is > decided the item gets removed from suspense (counterbalancing entry) > when a refund check is sent back to the customer, an entry to their > customer account against future bills, or whatever action gets taken > (generally you have to contact the customer to ask "what do you want > done with the extra?" and the amount is "in suspense" while that is > determined). If you knew at the time the amount was being processed > where it was to go, just do that (no need for a "suspense" entry).
I see what you mean here, but I'm afraid there just isn't a good way to do that in the current business architecture. I just didn't even consider this process in the design, and the current business feature design doesn't really have a good way to plug this in, per se. You can use A/R as your suspense account, and just account for it as a pre-payment; but there's no way to create one invoice that would give the full amount owed, and then other invoices that are for sub-amounts. GnuCash's business features were designed for invoicing in arrears, but it could still handle pre-payments (a pre-payment is just like an overpayment). I suspect that changing the way this works would be a major effort. You're welcome to attempt it and send in patches. (this IS the -devel list afterall!) > Michael -derek -- Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/ PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP key available _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel