GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 646541
new invoice line items default to invoice open date instead of current date
Last modified: 2018-06-29 22:56:05 UTC
When you have an invoice already open for example opened March 10 then on a later date try to enter a new line item, the date defaults to the day it was opened rather than current date.
Thank you for your report. The behaviour you describe is intended though (see also bug 352058). The invoice opened date is actually the invoice date. It doesn't seem to make sense to me to add entries on an invoice after its date. For example if you create an invoice with date March 10 and then add an entry on March 17, your printable invoice would be dated March 10 and have an entry for March 17. That would suggest your invoice is made for some item sold or some service rendered in the future.
Right. The behaviour is intended the way it is.
I disagree with this assessment. There is no reason to believe that an invoice is purely for things that happened in the past. That's why the Post Date is different than the Invoice Date, and also why you're allowed to keep the invoice "open" (unposted). The invoice date is when you open the invoice. The post date is when you close the invoice. The invoice could be a work order which does contain line-items between the invoice date and the post date. Perhaps the correct behavior is to open up to the "last used date"? If there are no entries in the invoice it can use the open date, but if there are entries it can use the "last" date used?
I agree with Derek. Here is how I use my invoices often: 1. Each month open up a new invoice for recurring customers add their basic monthly support line item. 2. Throughout the month as we do additional work we add a new line item for the work done and the cost. 3. End of month post the invoice. I'd think if you opened up an invoice that was already open you'd want it to default to the current date. As most often you'd be adding a line item for work done that day.
This discussion got me to look closer at the opened date and posted date and I'm sad to realize they are not what I thought they were. The invoice opening date as you describe it has no value at all to me. Until now I presumed it to be the invoice date, which would be printed on the printable invoice (a feature I don't use yet). But it turns out it is not used for anything that as accounting value, just a personal data point to see when you opened an invoice. Instead the only date with accounting value is the posted date. So yes, from that point of view your way of working makes more sense.
Any ideas on when this may be made in the update?
Good you reminded me... I have just committed this fix to trunk and the 2.4 branch. The fix will first appear in GnuCash 2.4.7. Note that I only partially reverted the commit for bug 352058. For customer invoices and employee vouchers, the current date will be used for new entries. For vendor bills, the bill's opened date will continue to be used. For bills the workflow as you describe is much less likely and the change I made for bug 352058 was prompted by a lot of superfluous edits I had to make when entering bills. So with the current implementation, I think we both get the most optimal workflow for our particular use cases.
Reassign version to 2.4.x so that individual 2.4 versions can be retired.
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