How can I duplicate existing transactions and assign them to a new invoice?

Question

I originally created a set of invoices, each with a set of itemised transactions for work done and duly sent them to my client at the time. Because he's tardy, he neglected to pay the invoices on time and they're outside of a 90-day invoice date payment policy, so he's told me to raise new invoices with new dates on them.

I've managed to create credit notes for each quarter for the respective invoices in GNUCash - with credit note 'opened' dated this month - but I'm now wondering how I can duplicate existing transactions used on the old invoices and assign the new transactions to the new invoices? I want to maintain the integrity of the dates and values for existing entries (because of the accounting basis I'm using in the UK), so I can't just raise new current-date invoices with the amounts credited because that would create a false income for the current financial year. I also can't just duplicate the invoices because he's asked that a number of them be combined (because submitting so many at once may cause additional delays in processing them).

Is there a clean way of doing this or do I just have to bite the bullet and manually re-enter the transactions one-by-one on each new invoice?

Answer 1

As I understand it -

1. You issued the original invoices from GnuCash, at which time your GnuCash database correctly showed that income was due for services provided, and your client was recorded as a debtor in the Accounts Receivable account. Your GnuCash correctly showed that your client was tardy with his payments, and
2. Your client expects you to perform further work (issuing new invoices) to aid him in remedying a problem that he caused, by failing to pay within the required time.

I guess the first question is: Do you want to perform the extra work for no extra payment? You may have made the judgement that the extra work is worthwhile if it will result in you receiving the payments that you're owed - so I'll assume that the answer is "yes".

The next question probably is: How can you provide the requested (second set of) invoices to your customer with a minimal amount of work on your part and with minimal disruption to your accounting system?

My suggestion would be: Since your GnuCash accounts are already correct (and show that the client has been invoiced) don't muck around with credit notes and fresh invoices generated by GnuCash. Just use a wordprocessor or spreadsheet program to generate invoices and deliver them to your client. GnuCash does not need to be updated.