Hi, folks:
I have used little bits of the business features of GnuCash for a long
time, but I don't know them well. I just tried to assign a Paypal
transaction as a payment, and it looks like GnuCash changed the
transaction in ways I don't understand.
I had an invoice for a customer. The invoice was posted, so my accounts
receivable account had an entry for that invoice.
The customer paid me using Paypal. Paypal deducted a service fee. I
entered a three-split transaction in GnuCash:
Debit $X Asset:Paypal account, where $X is the gross amount of the
invoice
Credit $Y Expense:Fees account, where $Y is the service fee Paypal
charged
Credit $(X-Y) Asset:Accounts Payable, where $X-Y is the net amount
received
I selected this transaction, brought up the context menu, and selected
"Assign as payment…". A dialogue appeared. It had the amount $(X-Y)
filled in, so I changed it to $X. It had the date of the Paypal
transaction. The invoice was in the Documents list in the centre of the
dialogue, so I selected that. I pressed the [OK] button.
Now, the transaction was changed. It had only two splits:
Debit $X Asset:Paypal account, where $X is the gross amount of the
invoice
Credit $X Asset:Accounts Payable
My split with $Y for the service fee was nowhere to be found. Also, the
Description for the transaction, and the Notes on each split, were
changed to just have the customer name.
Q1. Is this the expected behaviour?
Q2. What does the "Assign as payment" of a payment transaction to an
invoice actually do? The GnuCash manual, section 7.6. "Process Invoice
Payment", says what steps to take to perform an assignment, but it does
not explain what GnuCash does in the course of the assignment. It does
not lead me to believe that it will rewrite a transaction, and discard
splits.
Q3. What is the correct way to enter a transaction which pays an invoice
and incurs service fees? Should I always create the transaction with
"Process Payment…" from the business features if it will eventually be
part of an invoice payment? Is there a way to make an existing
transaction an invoice payment without losing what I put into the
transaction?
Q4. If I have an invoice marked PAID, how do I see which transactions
are assigned as the payments for that transaction?
I am using GnuCash 5.8 on macOS Sonoma 14.7.2. The transaction and
invoice in question were entered years ago, but I never bothered to
assign the payment to the invoice until now.
Colour me confused.
—Jim DeLaHunt
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