2025-02-01 GnuCash IRC logs
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03:01:07 <strk> warlord: so how do I reuse it if I cannot change invoice ID ? And what's the rationale for that design ? I made a mistake, why can't I fix it ?
07:08:09 <warlord> strk, you can absolutely change the invoice id.
07:08:41 <warlord> Click on the Edit button from the invoice view window to bring up the Edit Invoice dialog, which lets you change all the data in the invoice header.
09:25:54 <strk> warlord: ok, I could. Are these invoices (and bills) anywhere in the ledger ? I dont see the "Save" button turning active when I modify them
09:26:25 <warlord> strk, no. unposted invoices are not posted to the accounts.
09:26:30 <warlord> you cannot modify a posted invoice.
09:27:06 <strk> but I can "unpost" it, right ?
09:27:50 <warlord> Yes, if you need to modify the invoice you can unpost it (which removes it from the accounts), modify it, and then post it again. If you had any payments applied you will need to re-apply them.
09:34:22 <strk> it looks like I need to associate payments with the invoice as when I start GnuCash it tells me the invoice is unpayed
09:34:26 <strk> how do I do that ?
09:35:21 <strk> and, why would I want to do that ? I'm a bit confused as to whether or not to handle invoices via GC, I was thinking it would help with collecting VAT and taxes withheld
09:35:37 <strk> now everyting became so comple I'm not sure anymore 8-/
09:37:09 <warlord> Well, let's step back a minute: why did you want to modify a posted invoice?
09:37:24 <warlord> (NB: you can quit without saving to get back to where you were before you unposted)
09:37:46 <warlord> Yes, you need to "Process Payment" to tell GnuCash that you paid the invoice.
09:37:58 <warlord> (or rather that your customer paid you)
09:38:38 <warlord> You need to explicitly tell GnuCash .. The invoice system is "outside" the CoA... But there are links between the AR/AP system and the CoA.. Posting Invoices and Process Payments is how those links get created.
09:42:23 <strk> CoA stands for ?
09:42:48 <strk> sorry for lame questions, all is complicated further by language barrier (I'm from Italy)
09:43:26 <strk> but I think to understand that the concept of invoices is NOT somehting that would be converted/retained over to "ledger" (plaintextaccounting.org)
09:44:04 <warlord> Chart of Accounts
09:44:20 <strk> ok, that's what ends in the "journal" format of PTA
09:44:22 <strk> I guess
09:44:39 <strk> so, why I posted in the first place: becuase I was trying to learn by doing
09:44:44 <warlord> Your CoA is your normal list of accounts that holds your transactions
09:44:55 <strk> what happened when I posted I wasn't (and still am not) fully aware yet
09:45:21 <warlord> When you post, the invoice gets "solidified" and the transaction gets put into your CoA
09:45:30 <strk> and I'm using GnuCash sometime with LANGUAGE=it and sometimes with LANGUAGE=C so I'm also still learning how to map each term between languages
09:45:36 <warlord> Then, later, you Apply Payment
09:45:48 <strk> so "post" might be something else in italian
09:45:49 <warlord> Oh, don't do that! That can cause LOTS of issues
09:45:54 <strk> ok, *where* are these solidified ?
09:46:02 <warlord> Internally
09:46:05 <strk> I'm trying to use a script that sets LANGAUGE=it for consistency
09:46:48 <strk> yesterday I had a missing locale on a machine so reverted back but now it should be always in italian (I hope it helps me crawl the accounting learning curve as taxes are very country-specific so I need to understand some terms)
09:47:15 <warlord> ok
09:47:22 <strk> Internally you mean on the CoA though, or so you said
09:47:33 <warlord> I hope you "tested" with a test file and not your production data file
09:47:35 <strk> I think in italian "Post" is "Registra" (record)
09:47:45 <strk> and "Unpost" is "Ritira" (retire)
09:47:52 <warlord> No. Invoices are separate! That's your "issue"
09:47:59 <strk> I tested with a production data file, one month of data (jan 2025)
09:48:14 <warlord> The invoice posting is one thing. The transaction posting is another. And then there are links in the data objects to point between them.
09:48:25 <warlord> Well, THAT was dumb
09:48:39 <warlord> Go back to your backup file from before you started playiung
09:48:40 <strk> the file is under git, so I *might* try to revert
09:48:42 <warlord> playing
09:48:48 <warlord> Yes. Revert
09:49:09 <strk> eh, not sure I have that granularity, will see if git log -u shows me introduction of invoices
09:49:16 <strk> how do they look ? <Invoice or something ?
09:50:05 <warlord> or something. I don't recall. BUT--- any other data changes you made will be lost.
09:50:22 <strk> uhm gnc:GncInvoice tag is in the very first import, so no luck
09:51:02 <strk> question: given those invoices are separated from CoA... could I not just get rid of them and start fresh with ONLY the transactions ?
09:51:13 <strk> what value are those invoices adding ?
09:51:21 <warlord> Modifying your data file by hand is not supported.
09:51:36 <warlord> Invoices are for AP/AP. For a small business.
09:51:48 <strk> AP ? (I'm a one-man company)
09:52:32 <warlord> Accounts Payable
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09:54:24 <strk> I don't understand what AP/AP means in this context
09:55:12 <warlord> If you don't understand what Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable are, then you should not be using the Invoice/Bill system.. Or you should talk to your accountant.
09:55:28 <strk> at the moment I've an AP and an AR accounts
09:55:54 <strk> called something like "invoices" / "bills"
09:56:36 <strk> I do understand what they mean... I send out or receive an invoice, but there's no money movement involved ... and I've an advantage of recording that
09:56:40 <strk> correct ?
09:57:31 <strk> those are in the CoA though, so they do can be handled manually too (although unsupported by GnuCash, I understand)
09:58:34 <warlord> invoices create an accrual.
09:58:58 <strk> anyway, I'm not sure I organized those two accounts correctly. I have both AP (invoice sent out) and AR (invoices received) under a placeholder "Future Assets" under "Assets"
09:59:08 <warlord> When you post an invoice, you are accruing an income (Income -> AR). When the invoice is paid, that accrual gets turned into cash (AR -> Bank)
09:59:28 <warlord> Bills accrue expenses and work in the opposite direction (AP -> Expense ; Bank -> AP)
09:59:35 * strk needs to lookup "accrual "
10:00:19 <strk> ok, makes sense
10:01:25 <strk> Income -> AR -> Bank # I think I can postpone this as I've yet to get payments for the 2 AR I've registered, although all "stuck" invoices in GnuCash are of that kind
10:01:51 <strk> unless you tell me it's better to deal with them ASAP becuase the datafile could be corrupted for some reason
10:02:17 <strk> instead I was just entering now old (already payed) invoices that I received
10:02:25 <warlord> Yes. If you have a stuck invoice that never gets paid you can either unpost it to remove the Income->AR txn or you can pay it and then manually move the transaction from Bank to some other "uncollected debt" account
10:02:34 <strk> previously done as: Bank -> Expense
10:02:38 <warlord> I wouldn't enter old data
10:02:46 <strk> by old I mean this year
10:02:55 <strk> it's to record collected VAT credits
10:03:02 <warlord> Doesn't matter. I would not enter any data prior to your O-B
10:03:10 <strk> or collected withholding liability
10:03:17 <warlord> Just mark your collected VAT credits as O-B as well
10:03:21 <strk> I've set all OB to Jan 1st
10:03:38 <strk> uhm, isn't it too late now ? let me check
10:04:54 <warlord> Well, if you started Jan 1, then it might be easier to literally start over and re-enter everything..
10:05:06 <warlord> It's unlikely you have more than 1-200 txns in 1 month
10:05:06 <strk> maybe
10:05:19 <strk> uhm, can I ask GnuCash to count them ?
10:05:58 <strk> Transactions : 102 (1.2 per day)
10:06:02 <strk> hledger counted them for me
10:07:13 <warlord> Okay, so should only take a couple hours to re-enter everything without Invoices.
10:08:15 <strk> it's a lot to ask, after 2 days of being under this :(
10:08:23 <strk> why must it be so hard ?
10:08:32 <strk> I'd rather edit the XML and drop any trace of vendors
10:09:27 <warlord> It's not hard if you do it right.
10:09:42 <warlord> You didn't -- you were playing... and you played in your production file instead of playing in a test file.
10:11:34 <strk> I can't belive there's no way to fix it w/out restarting, it's just something that sets me off, and maybe that's why I stopped using GnuCash in 2020 or so ...
10:12:13 <strk> why can't I just remove all invoices and end up with unbalanced transactions ?
10:12:23 <strk> wouldn't it be easier for me to go find those transactions ?
10:13:06 <warlord> There are lots of internal cross-references in the data file. If you start removing things from it, you may inadvertantly leave a dangling reference.
10:13:16 <warlord> It's not just invoices and transactions.
10:13:34 <strk> see the thing is that I'm not done playing. For example I'm not sure this is enough: Bank -> AP
10:13:41 <warlord> There are also tax tables, customers, vendors, and probably other structures I dont remember after 20+ years.
10:13:58 <warlord> THen play in a test file and see how it works.
10:14:04 <strk> I haven't done any tax table, and I'm happy to start fresh with customers and vendors
10:14:26 <strk> is it 20+ years you don't use the business feature ? maybe I shound't either
10:14:42 <strk> I mean, I'm just trying to understand what I have where, what I owe to whom etc.
10:14:50 <strk> if it becomes a nightmare I give up easily
10:15:06 <warlord> One option: Unpost all invoices... Then save and backup the data file. THEN you can go in and remove all invoices, tax tables, customers, and vendors.. That SHOULD be sufficient. Maybe.
10:15:11 <strk> I have my own system to manage invoices and customers/vendors
10:15:28 <warlord> No, it's 20+ years since I WROTE the biz features.
10:15:32 <strk> what would "unpost" do ? Remove the transaction ?
10:15:36 <warlord> Yes
10:15:48 <strk> from AP only ?
10:15:48 <warlord> unpost will remove the transaction and unbind the invoice.
10:15:55 <warlord> AP and AR
10:16:03 <strk> ok let's see if "unpost" is "Ritira" in italian..
10:16:07 <warlord> (what do you mean, "from AP only"?)
10:16:43 <strk> lack of "List invoices" is also a pain, the workaround of using "." as a regexp takes a lot of clicks -- but thank you for sharing what you handled to write ! I really appreciate (honestly)
10:17:44 <warlord> List invoices would suck if you had 1000 invoices!
10:17:52 <warlord> Or even 100
10:18:02 <warlord> Sure 2-4 is fine, but it doesn't scale
10:18:50 <strk> paging..
10:18:57 <strk> anyway, this is nitpicking
10:19:26 <strk> I'm thinking... as I'd like to focus on the accounting, that I'd prefer keeping the transactions and only dropping the invoices
10:19:31 <strk> or "fixing" them to associate payments
10:20:19 <warlord> Invoices are generally best when you actually DO send an invoice to a customer and only get paid in the future.
10:20:33 <warlord> And even though I wrote it, I never use Vendor Bills.
10:21:27 <strk> I see what post / unpost do
10:21:47 <strk> as my books are ok
10:22:00 <strk> so posting gets me balance=0 in the AP
10:22:09 <strk> unposting gets it negative
10:22:21 <strk> the only annoyance is that GnuCash thinks it's unpayed
10:22:23 <warlord> If you already have the payment transaction in there, yes.
10:22:38 <strk> I think the manual had a note about that, how to associate a payment with th einvoice
10:22:40 <warlord> After you post it, you need to (re)apply the payment so that gnucash knows it was paid.
10:22:51 <warlord> You still use Process Payment.
10:22:59 <warlord> And click on the invoice and the payment transaction
10:23:12 <strk> could be same as "Pay" ? (last button on the right of the invoice view)
10:24:09 <strk> ok Pay shows me a table with 3 "Documents" summing up to 0, as if it found them already
10:25:55 <strk> I "payed" it in two parts: money to the customer first, withheld money to govt second
10:26:33 <strk> bah, unposted again, it's too complex
10:27:20 <strk> what a mess
10:31:45 <warlord> the new apply-payment dialog is a bit complex. I think you need to select all three entries to get them bound.
10:31:53 <warlord> gjanssens rewrote it..
10:32:02 <warlord> so I am less familiar with the new interface
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10:48:54 <strk> it's annoying that I cannot change the description on the expense account for that invoice, it's fixed and is the name of the vendor
10:50:18 <warlord> The whole point is to put the detail into the invoice, not into the transaction
10:50:39 <warlord> If you want a 1:1 mapping of invoice entries -> transaction splits, then uncheck the "accumulate splits" when you post.
10:58:17 <strk> and now I realize why I wanted to use invoices: to record maturated VAT debt, which is in the received invoice
10:59:16 <strk> what I really want is to retain full convertibility between gnucash datafile and hledger
10:59:43 <strk> so as much as possible on the CoA
10:59:55 <warlord> I know nothing about hledger
11:02:48 <strk> a tool like "ledger", part of a set of tools all reading a compatible text only format... https://plaintextaccounting.org/
11:03:14 <strk> there's a converted from gnucash to ledger, the converted data in my case is not including the A/Payable account I just created in GnuCash and I dunno why
11:05:00 <strk> oh, no, is actually ther
11:08:02 <strk> what am I supposed to do next year when I start a new book ? Is there a way to export/import vendors/customers ?
11:08:14 <strk> and structure of the CoA ?
11:10:11 <warlord> Why start a new book?
11:10:16 <strk> yearly
11:11:43 <warlord> but why?
11:11:47 <warlord> Gnucash doesn't require it.
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11:13:51 <strk> to save me from those mines like dangling refs etc.
11:14:29 <strk> I've now received a new invoice and trying (still in the production data) to enter it manually
11:15:19 <strk> in the A/Payable there's a column (expiration) that I cannot compile, does GnuCash *require* use of those invoices to edit that account ?
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11:16:23 <warlord> hmm.. not sure why I get getting disconnected. I wonder if it's an IRC issue?
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11:52:20 <warlord> strk, i appear to be back...
12:18:46 <strk> hi
12:19:03 <strk> I'm still trying to get my way into accounting concepts, basically
12:19:33 <strk> I have both A/P and A/R showing with positive totals, is that normal if I have both bills to pay and invoices to be payed ?
12:24:53 <strk> ok, I moved the A/P under Liabilities, so it makes more sense now
12:25:27 <strk> opening that account I see that the "Operation" for the one done by invoicing is "Documento di acquisto" (damn italian, sorry)
12:26:05 <strk> but if I write something there manuallly there's a pull down menu that doesn't give mt ehe "acquisto" (acquisition) choice, only the "vendita" (sell) choice, why would tht be ?
13:02:23 <strk> I've done a new invoice, and I still don't like the vendor name in the description of the expense account
13:02:32 <strk> shoulnd't it be the invoice description instead?
13:12:22 <warlord> what "invoice description"?
13:26:00 <strk> uff, when I open GnuCash again (to go check) I get the memo of expiration, but the expiration date says it will expire next week :(
13:26:12 <strk> sounds like a bug
13:26:53 <strk> https://ctrl.vi/i/tBNmzb0NM <-- sorry it is in italian
13:27:16 <warlord> "expiration"? you mean "due date"?
13:27:36 <warlord> that's not a bug -- it tells you everything that is due "soon" (where "soon" is something you can define)
13:28:28 <strk> https://ctrl.vi/i/RK7DrfKYu <--- this is the description I was after ( "ADSL Febbraio 2025" )
13:29:18 <strk> but in Uscite:Lavoro:ADSL (an Expenses account) I read this: https://ctrl.vi/i/2NW8VbKrf
13:29:32 <strk> which is, just the name of the vendor
13:30:32 <strk> about "soon to be due", where do I define it ? Can I define it per-invoice ? Per vendor ? I have these things self-payed by the bank so I don't necessarely need to take any action, other than make sure there's enough on the bank account
13:37:41 <warlord> strk, due date is global setting
13:37:49 <warlord> how many days in advance to notify
13:39:02 <warlord> Regarding your description --- as I said, if you want a 1:1 for Invoice Line-Item to Transaction Split-Memo, then uncheck the "Accumulate Splits".
13:39:31 <warlord> The Txn Description will still say the Vendor / Invoice # -- but if you expand the splits you'll see your Line-Item descriptions.
13:40:37 <strk> I think I did unheck that
13:41:06 <strk> ah, I had to expand, I to see the split, I see
13:41:10 <warlord> The click on "Expand Splits" in the register
13:42:15 <strk> no, conceptually.. is it not a problem that the date in the Expenses account is the date of receiving the invoice ?
13:48:28 <strk> ok I've disabled due date notification
13:49:23 <warlord> That's the definition of accrual.
13:49:42 <strk> now, that invoice contains VAT, should I do the split to send VAT to liability now or upon paying ?
13:49:51 <warlord> The expense (or income) is booked when it occurs, as opposed to cash accounting where it is booked when the money changes hands.
13:50:11 <strk> ok
13:50:15 <warlord> Well, if you want to use automatic vat computations it needs to happen on the invoice (via tax tables)
13:50:24 <strk> so it's correct for the Expense to be augmented upon receiving the invoice
13:50:30 <warlord> If you're going to do it manually then I don't see the point of using invoices.
13:50:36 <warlord> yes
13:50:51 <warlord> i need to step away for a bit.
13:50:54 <strk> yeah, I was wondering... then it's time to do tax tables I guess
13:51:07 <strk> me too, btw, need to run away from computer for a day or two :)
14:27:52 <strk> can due dates be added to the actual account data ? CoA ?
14:28:01 <strk> for liabilities, in particular
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