On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 12:16 PM, ario
<..hidden..> wrote:
On Sat, 2012-12-15 at 17:45 +0100, Erik Huelsmann wrote:
> Hi Ario,
>
>
> The book documents the difference between invoices and transactions in
> section 34.2:
Hi,
sorry that I didn't get that far. I encountered a lot of empty pages and
didn't expect that particular section to be populated with text :)
> """
> When a business decides not to use the order management as per the
> previous
> chapter it may ïnd itself in need to manually enter invoices. But even
> if it does
> use order management, it may be necessary to enter an invoice
> directly.
> When creating a transaction to record that the company owes another
> entity
> (a vendor invoice) or that it has outstanding receivables, LedgerSMB
> offers two
> options:
> 1. Invoices
> 2. Transactions
> Transactions have very limited functionality: they allow a user to
> enter a
> debt owed or owned into the AR and AP subsystems. They also require
> the
> user to think how the other side of the transaction should be
> registered; i.e.
> which cost account the AP transaction should be posted against, or
> which income account the AR transaction should be posted against. If
> there are sales
> taxes applicable, the user is required to manually calculate and enter
> them.
> Invoices offer a much more clever set of functionalities. First of
> all, it allows
> the user to create a document to be sent to the vendor or customer.
> Second, invoices take advantage of parts and services to automate
> calculation of sales
> taxes. Third, invoices update inventory for items held in stock
> (parts, assemblies). Transactions offer none of this.
> """
>
>
> Which means that if you don't want to update your inventory, you
> should use a transaction, if you do want to update inventory, you
> should use an invoice. Note however that inventory won't be updated
> for invoiced services: services aren't held in stock.
>
>
> So: it really depends on what you mean by "does an invoice become a
> transaction". Invoices are recorded in the ledger as transactions. You
> don't need to do anything special for that.
>
>
> I hope that explains.
But on the other hand, and only as a side note, I'd like to point at the
following. In section 30.1 and on, you write:
<quote>
When creating a customer or vendor in LedgerSMB, you have to create a
company. However, this company canât itself be used as a one. Instead,
you have to create an âaccountâ which is linked to the company. An
account can have either the role of vendor or customer. Due to this
construct, a single company can both be vendor and customer which is
sometimes desirable.
One company can have multiple customer and/or vendor type accounts.
</quote>
This being the case, it would be more logical to have the
'vendor/customer class' button removed from the 'Add Company' menu item
and to make a general 'Company|Add/Search/History' set of menu items
(independent of it being a 'creditor/vendor or debtor/customer), where
in any of the sub-menus ('Add/Search results/History results' windows as
well as after completion of Adding the company), one would encounter an
'Add account' button. This button would finally let you choose whether
the *account* (not the company, as apparently it can be both) is of the
debtor (customer) or creditor (vendor) class.
In other words, make the creation of the 'company' a general one, only
decide at the account creation (or alter) level the creditor/debtor
class type.
1.4 breaks this off as a "Contacts" menu and allows both "Person" and "Company" containers to be used as customers and vendors. (In 1.3, a customer or vendor is always a company, and an employee is always a person. ÂWe still have employees as always persons, but customers and vendors now can be too).
There are some very significant enhancements in this area in 1.4. ÂThese include:
1: ÂYou can set up companies, and persons as leads and search on them later (and attach notes to them etc).
2: ÂThe amount of CRM functionality in this way has been improved (though not everywhere we want it yet.
There is also an add-on which backports this to 1.3.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers