Eventually, you will receive payment from your customers for outstanding invoices. To register these payments, use the Process Payment application found in
→ → .Tip | |
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There is an alternative way of assigning a payment to (one or more) invoices where the payment transaction already exists, say in the case where transactions have been imported from a bank. There is no way to assign a payment to an invoice during the import process, so this must be done after transactions have been imported. This can best be done starting from the asset account register holding the imported payment
transaction (like your bank account). In that account, select the payment, right-click
(control-click for One caveat: the logic behind Assign as payment... won't properly detect credit note reimbursements and will wrongfully interpret such a transaction as a vendor bill. |
The Process Payment application consists of:
Payment Information - Customer - the customer who paid you. If you remember the
company name you entered in the New Customer
window for this customer, start to type it in this field and GnuCash
will try auto complete
it for you. Else, press the button to access the
Find Customer window described in
Section 7.3.2, “Find and Edit”. Highlight the customer you are looking for with a
click in the search results, then press the button.
Payment Information - Invoice - the invoice for which payment was received. If
you remember the invoice ID, start to type it in this field and GnuCash
will try auto complete it for you. Else, press the button
to access the Find Invoice window described in
Section 7.4.4, “Find”. Highlight the invoice you are looking for with
a click in the search results, then press the button.
Payment Information - Date - the date you you received payment.
Payment Information - Amount - the amount of money received.
Payment Information - Num - the check number.
Payment Information - Memo - any comments about this payment.
Post To - the A/Receivable account to which to post this transaction.
Transfer Account - the account where the money will be deposited (a checking account for example).
If a customer overpays an invoice or pays for goods or services before they have been invoiced,
Process Payment for the total amount received. GnuCash
will then keep track of the
over-payment (or pre-payment) in the A/R account and you can use the residual when paying
the next invoice.
Partial payments are possible too. Select the invoice to pay. GnuCash
will automatically suggest that
invoice's remaining balance as payment amount. Simply adjust that amount to what you want to
pay.
Important | |
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Please check with your accountant to ensure the following is acceptable in your region. |
The usual way to do this is to process a payment for the invoice to a BadDebt
account. Such an account would be an expense account. However, in GnuCash
, you can't process a
payment for an invoice directly to an expense account, so it takes two steps:
Pay the invoice to an asset or liability account, such as your checking account.
Change the asset or liability account, in the non Accounts Receivable split of the payment transaction, to the BadDebt expense account.
Specifically
Remove all transactions from the A/R account related to the invoice, except for the invoice's transaction itself. This includes any payment transactions, and transactions between your BadDebt and A/R account.
In case the payment has associated lot link transactionsa, remove those as well.
If all is well, your Process Payment window for this customer should list the invoice the customer won't pay, and no prepayments.
Pay your invoice to an arbitrary asset or liability account. It can be your checking account. We will fix that in the next step.
Open the account register for your A/R account. For this invoice there should now be one payment
transaction. If you are using GnuCash
2.6.0 - 2.6.4 there will also be one lot link
transactiona.
Select the payment transaction and change the transfer account to your BadDebt account. Make sure to leave the transaction (eg by clicking on another transaction) to save the changes.
If all is well, your Process Payment window should still be clean: no pre-payments, and the bad debt invoice gone.
See https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Business_Features_Issues for more information.