Developing an activity as an independent worker : Use the personal File or create a separate one ?

[Dave Reed]

On Tuesday 12 October 2004 09:57, Thierry Lelièvre wrote:
> Hi everybody !!
> 
> I am a gnucash user for my personal needs and it works fine for
> reporting all the expenses and investments of my little family.
> 
> As I am about get a new job where I would work as an independent 
worker,
> I will have to carefully follow all the expenses and revenues related 
to
> this activity ; so my question is : do I have to create new accounts
> (related to the new job) in my current personal file or is it better 
to
> create a completely separate file. In the latter case, is there a way 
to
> links the two files ?
> 
> Any advice or return of experience would be greatly welcome !!!
> 
> Thierry


I would certainly create two separate files. It sounds like as in the
U.S., you also need to track the income/expeneses separately for tax
purposes. Using a separate file, you will be able to produce the
profit/loss report for the business.

I do a very small amount of work (only a couple thousand dollars a
year) as an independent contractor and use seprate files. I'm not
certain what you're wanting to do regarding the two files. The only
two times I find myself duplicating work and entering transactions in
both is when I enter a payment from the contractor both in my
self-employment gnucash file and in my personal gnucash file as a
deposit into my checking account. I have minimal business expenses and
put those on my credit card and then just enter those in my
self-employment gnucash file as expenses. I don't bother tracking my
non-tax related expenses in gnucash carefully (most things just go
into an Expenses:Misc account), but if I wanted to I can see the issue
this sould cause.

I don't believe there is any way to actually link two gnucash files to
solve this problem. If I had significant amounts of business expenses
and wanted to track things completely separately so it didn't also
affect my personal profit/loss reports (instead of doing just enough
to calculate my taxes correctly), I would get a separate checking
account/credit card for use in the business. It would still require
entering amounts I pay myself in both files, but that's it (at leat I
think).

Dave