Re: [GNC] Customer Invoice Ledger Entries (Debits & Credits) for Freelancers?

2021-06-17 Thread Michael or Penny Novack
It's NOT just "freelancers". It's the more general problem of invoicing 
only supported for when on accrual basis, not for when on cash basis. I 
have been keeping books for non-profits and these are usually cash 
basis. On the other hand, some individuals are required to use accrual 
basis.


So the issue is (for you) how hard to make the annual or quarterly 
adjustments (depends on how you file tax). I don't know what YOUR "line 
items" might be, but if you are a freelancers providing a service, the 
income side adjustments might not be hard at all. And you are in a 
position not to have "pending" expenses at end of year/quarter.


Michael D Novack

ps -- producing the report with various accounts excluded not hard at 
all. Your extra work is entering twice for each invoice when posted 
received or paid (the second transaction moving from "pending" to 
"paid"in income and expenses.




On 6/17/2021 7:07 PM, GrantSRobertson wrote:

When entering a customer invoice, it appears that the only balancing accounts
(the non-Accounts-Receivable accounts) GnuCash will allow one to choose from
are income accounts and certain,  non-special, liability accounts. Normally,
this would be just fine for a business accounting system because businesses
accrue their income when it is earned. However, individuals (such as
freelancers) accrue their income only after it is paid. Therefore, if I am
not paid for months (it happens), then all my tax calculations will be off
because I will be paying taxes on income earned (the business way) instead
of only on income paid (the individual's way).

If I had complete control, I would assign an Equity:Pending_Income account
as the balancing account, to show that I had "equity" but not income, up
until the time I actually get paid. Then, after I get paid, I would manually
transfer that money from that special Equity:Pending_Income account to an
appropriate income account. I recognize that when applying a payment to a
customer invoice, the only ledger entries made are the transfer from the
Assets:Accounts-Receivable account to the Assets:Whatever_Banking_Account
account. So, any other transfers/ledger-entries would need to be made by
hand.

However, because the above is not possible, I am looking for other
alternatives.

My first thought is to simply introduce another level to the income accounts
hierarchy. Something like:

Income:Pending
Income:Paid   (placeholder)
   :

I would still have to manually create a separate ledger entry to transfer
money from the Income:Pending account to the actual income account it
belongs in.

And, I would then have to figure out how to generate reports that ONLY
reported income from under the Income:Paid placeholder parent account. Would
that be too very difficult? Or would I just be creating an ever-increasing
amount of compounding complexity to my accounting workflow?

In the end, it seems GnuCash is not really designed for freelancers yet. All
assumptions are that one is operating as a business with paid employees. It
seems to me, to achieve the most flexibility, GnuCash should allow users to
custom configure the behavior of the invoice and payment features, to allow
us to automatically do whatever transfers and ledger entries we see fit to
achieve the intended goal.



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Re: [GNC] Customer Invoice Ledger Entries (Debits & Credits) for Freelancers?

2021-06-17 Thread Derek Atkins
See https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95700

-derek

On Thu, June 17, 2021 7:07 pm, GrantSRobertson wrote:
> When entering a customer invoice, it appears that the only balancing
> accounts
> (the non-Accounts-Receivable accounts) GnuCash will allow one to choose
> from
> are income accounts and certain,  non-special, liability accounts.
> Normally,
> this would be just fine for a business accounting system because
> businesses
> accrue their income when it is earned. However, individuals (such as
> freelancers) accrue their income only after it is paid. Therefore, if I am
> not paid for months (it happens), then all my tax calculations will be off
> because I will be paying taxes on income earned (the business way) instead
> of only on income paid (the individual's way).
>
> If I had complete control, I would assign an Equity:Pending_Income account
> as the balancing account, to show that I had "equity" but not income, up
> until the time I actually get paid. Then, after I get paid, I would
> manually
> transfer that money from that special Equity:Pending_Income account to an
> appropriate income account. I recognize that when applying a payment to a
> customer invoice, the only ledger entries made are the transfer from the
> Assets:Accounts-Receivable account to the Assets:Whatever_Banking_Account
> account. So, any other transfers/ledger-entries would need to be made by
> hand.
>
> However, because the above is not possible, I am looking for other
> alternatives.
>
> My first thought is to simply introduce another level to the income
> accounts
> hierarchy. Something like:
>
> Income:Pending
> Income:Paid   (placeholder)
>   :
>
> I would still have to manually create a separate ledger entry to transfer
> money from the Income:Pending account to the actual income account it
> belongs in.
>
> And, I would then have to figure out how to generate reports that ONLY
> reported income from under the Income:Paid placeholder parent account.
> Would
> that be too very difficult? Or would I just be creating an ever-increasing
> amount of compounding complexity to my accounting workflow?
>
> In the end, it seems GnuCash is not really designed for freelancers yet.
> All
> assumptions are that one is operating as a business with paid employees.
> It
> seems to me, to achieve the most flexibility, GnuCash should allow users
> to
> custom configure the behavior of the invoice and payment features, to
> allow
> us to automatically do whatever transfers and ledger entries we see fit to
> achieve the intended goal.
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
> ___
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user@gnucash.org
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-- 
   Derek Atkins 617-623-3745
   de...@ihtfp.com www.ihtfp.com
   Computer and Internet Security Consultant

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Re: [GNC] Customer Invoice Ledger Entries (Debits & Credits) for Freelancers?

2021-06-17 Thread Clint Chaplin
More formally, GnuCash seems to account using accrual basis, while an
individual tends to account using cash basis?

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 4:09 PM GrantSRobertson  wrote:

> When entering a customer invoice, it appears that the only balancing
> accounts
> (the non-Accounts-Receivable accounts) GnuCash will allow one to choose
> from
> are income accounts and certain,  non-special, liability accounts.
> Normally,
> this would be just fine for a business accounting system because businesses
> accrue their income when it is earned. However, individuals (such as
> freelancers) accrue their income only after it is paid. Therefore, if I am
> not paid for months (it happens), then all my tax calculations will be off
> because I will be paying taxes on income earned (the business way) instead
> of only on income paid (the individual's way).
>
> If I had complete control, I would assign an Equity:Pending_Income account
> as the balancing account, to show that I had "equity" but not income, up
> until the time I actually get paid. Then, after I get paid, I would
> manually
> transfer that money from that special Equity:Pending_Income account to an
> appropriate income account. I recognize that when applying a payment to a
> customer invoice, the only ledger entries made are the transfer from the
> Assets:Accounts-Receivable account to the Assets:Whatever_Banking_Account
> account. So, any other transfers/ledger-entries would need to be made by
> hand.
>
> However, because the above is not possible, I am looking for other
> alternatives.
>
> My first thought is to simply introduce another level to the income
> accounts
> hierarchy. Something like:
>
> Income:Pending
> Income:Paid   (placeholder)
>   :
>
> I would still have to manually create a separate ledger entry to transfer
> money from the Income:Pending account to the actual income account it
> belongs in.
>
> And, I would then have to figure out how to generate reports that ONLY
> reported income from under the Income:Paid placeholder parent account.
> Would
> that be too very difficult? Or would I just be creating an ever-increasing
> amount of compounding complexity to my accounting workflow?
>
> In the end, it seems GnuCash is not really designed for freelancers yet.
> All
> assumptions are that one is operating as a business with paid employees. It
> seems to me, to achieve the most flexibility, GnuCash should allow users to
> custom configure the behavior of the invoice and payment features, to allow
> us to automatically do whatever transfers and ledger entries we see fit to
> achieve the intended goal.
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
> ___
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-- 
Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin
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[GNC] Customer Invoice Ledger Entries (Debits & Credits) for Freelancers?

2021-06-17 Thread GrantSRobertson
When entering a customer invoice, it appears that the only balancing accounts
(the non-Accounts-Receivable accounts) GnuCash will allow one to choose from
are income accounts and certain,  non-special, liability accounts. Normally,
this would be just fine for a business accounting system because businesses
accrue their income when it is earned. However, individuals (such as
freelancers) accrue their income only after it is paid. Therefore, if I am
not paid for months (it happens), then all my tax calculations will be off
because I will be paying taxes on income earned (the business way) instead
of only on income paid (the individual's way). 

If I had complete control, I would assign an Equity:Pending_Income account
as the balancing account, to show that I had "equity" but not income, up
until the time I actually get paid. Then, after I get paid, I would manually
transfer that money from that special Equity:Pending_Income account to an
appropriate income account. I recognize that when applying a payment to a
customer invoice, the only ledger entries made are the transfer from the
Assets:Accounts-Receivable account to the Assets:Whatever_Banking_Account
account. So, any other transfers/ledger-entries would need to be made by
hand.

However, because the above is not possible, I am looking for other
alternatives.

My first thought is to simply introduce another level to the income accounts
hierarchy. Something like:

Income:Pending
Income:Paid   (placeholder)
  :

I would still have to manually create a separate ledger entry to transfer
money from the Income:Pending account to the actual income account it
belongs in.

And, I would then have to figure out how to generate reports that ONLY
reported income from under the Income:Paid placeholder parent account. Would
that be too very difficult? Or would I just be creating an ever-increasing
amount of compounding complexity to my accounting workflow?

In the end, it seems GnuCash is not really designed for freelancers yet. All
assumptions are that one is operating as a business with paid employees. It
seems to me, to achieve the most flexibility, GnuCash should allow users to
custom configure the behavior of the invoice and payment features, to allow
us to automatically do whatever transfers and ledger entries we see fit to
achieve the intended goal. 



--
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Re: [GNC] Reconciliation screw-up

2021-06-17 Thread w...@theprescotts.com
What confuses me about the original post is it shows $1 leaving C (to D), but 
the text says $1 was should have been added to C (from A). Yet C was 
reconciled. It seems like before this was fixed, C should have been off by $2.

Will

On 2021 Jun 17, at 06-17 08:12:51, Michael or Penny Novack 
 wrote:

On 6/16/2021 11:09 PM, Jeff wrote:
> I may confuse myself even more here, so would appreciate some patience and 
> guidance.
> I was given bank statements for 2 accounts (A and C).  Unbeknownst to me 
> there was a transaction that was supposed to go from account A to C (A $1 -> 
> C $1).  When the entries were made, the transactions were entered as
> 
> A $1 -> B $1
> and
> C $1 -> D $1
> 
> Accounts B and D never get reconciled.  Accounts A and C do, and are now.  
> What would be the simplest way to correct this error? 

SIMPLEST or most correct/formal?

The SIMPLEST way would be to edit the first and delete the second.

But in proper bookkeeping you do not delete past transactions nor edit them 
(fixing this way WHILE you are in the process of entering transactions is 
another matter.. I'll do it if still in the session). Instead you enter 
correction transaction(s).

In THIS case would be a transaction B->C correcting the first (description 
referring back to the first and indication a correction transaction) and a 
transaction D->C reversing the second transaction (again with a suitable 
description). That leaves an audit trail of the correction(s)

Michael D Novack


-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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Re: [GNC] Reconciliation screw-up

2021-06-17 Thread Michael or Penny Novack

On 6/16/2021 11:09 PM, Jeff wrote:
I may confuse myself even more here, so would appreciate some patience 
and guidance.
I was given bank statements for 2 accounts (A and C).  Unbeknownst to 
me there was a transaction that was supposed to go from account A to C 
(A $1 -> C $1).  When the entries were made, the transactions were 
entered as


A $1 -> B $1
and
C $1 -> D $1

Accounts B and D never get reconciled.  Accounts A and C do, and are 
now.  What would be the simplest way to correct this error? 


SIMPLEST or most correct/formal?

The SIMPLEST way would be to edit the first and delete the second.

But in proper bookkeeping you do not delete past transactions nor edit 
them (fixing this way WHILE you are in the process of entering 
transactions is another matter.. I'll do it if still in the session). 
Instead you enter correction transaction(s).


In THIS case would be a transaction B->C correcting the first 
(description referring back to the first and indication a correction 
transaction) and a transaction D->C reversing the second transaction 
(again with a suitable description). That leaves an audit trail of the 
correction(s)


Michael D Novack


--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality 
of the grave.

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