On Mon, 2001-11-26 at 21:41, Derek Atkins wrote: > "Olaf Faaland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > You may have already thought of this, but that the fact that a payment has > > been applied to an invoice does not mean the invoice's balance is > > necessarily 0. Partial payments happen a lot. Your query is still going to > > have to do a lookup of each linked payment and total them to determine the > > balance. Or, you'll have to maintain a field in the invoice that keeps the > > payment status in some form - "paid/not paid", or "unpaid balance", or > > something. > > Hmm, good point. Note that if you do keep an 'invoice is paid off' > flag, then you only need to keep track of how much of the invoice > is paid off. > > Similarly, once I add Customer support, then it really doesn't matter; > you apply payments from the Customer in a FIFO/LIFO/whatever to the > existing list of invoices and what really matters is not the > individual invoices but rather how much the Customer owes you. > > The fact that there are N invoices in the e.g. 0-31 day period doesn't > matter; it's the sum of the outstanding balances that matter.
I'm not sure that is the case. Invoices are often issued under terms that specify penalties (interest) to be paid if they are late. I know in some industries those penalties can be negotiated, i.e., they can differ from invoice to invoice. So tracking the specific invoices with outstanding balances is important. And if customers can pay specific invoices out of order, then that would add another wrinkle. dave
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