Re: Thoughts on payment handling in 1.4.x

[David Tangye <..hidden..>]

On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 09:40 -0700, Chris Travers wrote: 
> Hi Ed;
> 
> 
> > I can't help wondering if the current Quotes/Order/Invoice model isn't
> > slightly too few states for some business.
> >
> > My model is: [snip]
Its a bit of a problem in a way, that the implied business operational
model and rules is one cast-in-stone set from the mind of one sql-ledger
creator, who has been noted for uttering such sentiments as 'this is how
business should work'. While it does work for a good % of folks, it does
not suit many others. It always occurred to me that a little more
flexibility would be nice in some cases.

BTW: Huge flexibility can be achieved by defining a model at a higher
level of abstraction, where we deal in entities such as 'Business Event'
and 'Business Event Flow Rule', where Order and Invoice etc are
instances of 'Business Event', and 'Order must preceed Invoice' or
'Order optionally preceeds Invoice' are instances of 'Business Event
Flow Rule'. This is how workflow systems as designed. However its a
nightmare for many people to set up as an accounting system, and instead
common business domain expertise is expected to be encoded (enforced in
code) into an accounting system to some degree. Its all a question of
how many,  how tight and therefore how restrictive those rules are.

> Ok, let us define the document states:
> 
> An invoice is a document which states that the goods and services have
> been provided at a specific price.
My stab: An invoice is a claim against a customer for money, supported
by a description of goods or services of monetary value supplied which
are the basis of the claim. (I think the word 'claim' is significant
legally.) There must be a url somewhere that defined all this sort of
stuff properly.