On 7/12/22 5:18 PM, Eric Hammond wrote:
Revisiting the pre-paid invoice (coupon, credit note ...) issue:
In standard accounting a prepaid debt (aka a coupon, credit note, etc) is
booked as a liability.
On paper, and as direct import of transactions into GnuCash, this works
However, I abandoned the brute force transaction method since I really like the
GnuCash Invoice and Bill features: so I started fresh with imported Invoices
and Bills.
My real life example: client prepays for 13 1 hour tutoring sessions, $25 each;
to be used over the next year:
1. New Invoice for the prepayment:
Dr. $325 Assets: Receivables Cr. $325 Liabilities:
Prepaid
2. Process Payment for the coupons
Dr. $325 Assets: Cash Cr. $325
Assets: Receivables
I 'earn' payment for an individual session when it is complete.
3. New invoice for that session
Dr. $25 Assets: Receivables Cr. $25 Income: Tutoring
4. and pay for it from the prepay
Dr. $25 Liabilities: Prepaid Cr. $25 Assets:
Receivables
GnuCash, however, appears to only allow payment of an invoice from an asset.
Is there a way GnuCash can accommodate this?
I'm curious why you raised an invoice for a payment against a
coupon/credit note.
Why not just book a payment against 'no-invoice' for that 'customer'?
You should do this manually, using the Process Payment feature, not as
an import as far as I'm aware so the Business Features link the payment
transaction to a customer/client. If you have LOTS of pre-payments, then
yes, you can import standard transactions, but then you still need to
individually, right-click and 'assign as payment' for each one.
Then, when you earn the revenue, you raise the invoice and clear it with
the pre-payment. (Step 1, enter & post invoice; Step 2, Process Payment
to apply partial pre-payment to the invoice)
The Pre-Payment would end up something like:
Dr. Assets:Cash/Bank/Un-deposited Funds/...
Cr. Assets:AR
*note, a Credit balance in an Asset account is a 'contra' balance
because Assets *normally* have Debit balances. Thus, if a
customer/client has a negative/credit AR balance, that is 'contra' what
is expected and technically, a liability, so no need for a special
Liability:Pre-Paid account, the GnuCash Business Features handle all of
this for you *and* give you nice reporting capabilities. That's the idea
behind the respective AR/AP accounts and their linked reports/functions.
(AP works like the mirror of AR with vendors that you owe instead of
customers/clients that owe you.)
The Invoice would be something like:
Dr. Assets:AR
Cr. Income:Tutoring
*Applying the Pre-Payment would show up as:
Dr. Assets:AR
Cr. Assets:AR
*This doesn't show up as its own transaction, but effectively that's how
it works. The best way to see this account balance effect is with a
Customer Report and using the option to show Detailed/Simple
'Transaction Links'. (so you can see which payments apply to which
invoices and vice versa. I'm a fan of the Detailed option for the
complete information it offers, but you may prefer Simple.)
I'm not certain why any 'coupon' scheme exists in this case. You can
track unused pre-payments via Customer Reports. (functionally 'Statement
of Account') You can then provide reports/statements to clients to show
remaining pre-paid balance available for use by them as needed.
(note, I see you say you're reviving a previous discussion, but I don't
see reference to it - I didn't dig through the entire digest you quoted,
though it may have been there.)
Thanks for any help,
Eric Hammond
PS: Am I supposed to keep the rest of the messages below?
Please, "No." It is not 'good form' to quote the entire digest. The wiki
covers this, but the ideal 'workflow' when using digest mode is:
1. Reply-all/Reply-List
2. Change your Subject Line to match your topic (copy paste if this is a
reply, prepended with "Re:" without the quotes helps)
3. Remove *all* of the quotation except what you are replying to. (**TIP
- select what you want to reply to *then* hit the Reply-all/List button,
as most e-mail/list clients will then *only* quote what you selected,
saving you lots of deletion work. It is okay to include the header
portion of that message, and then you can copy/paste the subject as
*your* subject easily.)
Regards,
Adrien
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
[email protected]
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
