This is because it is not part of a payment, it is part of the bill line
items and the bill is linked to that payment.
The date of the line items is for reference. ALL of the line items share
the posting date of the bill itself. If you turn off 'consolidate line
items when posting' you will see them in the respective AR/AP account
transaction entry, but all of them will be posted to your books with the
same date as the bill/invoice.
If you need to post something specifically in a period and bill for it
in a later period, consider using intermediary 'accrued
revenue/expenses' accounts.
For example, to record work done in one period but billed later you
would do:
Dr. Accrued Revenue
Cr. Sales
Then when you write the bill you set the line-item linked account to
Accrued Revenue (rather than Sales) and the resulting transaction will be:
Dr. Accounts Receivable
Cr. Accrued Revenue
The Accrued accounts can be sub-accounts of the respective AR/AP
accounts, that way, the totals will roll-up to give you an at-a-glance
accurate picture of what is due/owed.
Optionally, process the refund as a stand-alone Credit Note and apply
the payment to both the Credit Note & the Bill.
Regards,
Adrien
On 3/29/26 8:28 PM, Jediator wrote:
Thanks for all your responses. It turned out that I misunderstood how
GnuCash manages account payable. I was expecting the refund item (with
a +amount) showing up in the running balance after assigning the
corresponding refund transaction to the bill, but it didn't. Instead,
the refund amount is subtracted from the the last transaction amount. As
shown in the attached sample bill printout, the refund amount ($36.42)
is subtracted from the last payment transaction of $100, which ends with
a transaction amount of -$63.58. Why this number reduction only occurs
with the last payment instead immediately after the refund assignment is
still a mystery to me...
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