Mixed Personal and Business accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

I'm going to jump in here with a comment from the accounting/systems 
perspective

>On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 02:55:12PM +0000, Karl Grant wrote:
>  
>
>>However, now I'm stuck on a technical point, is there anyway I can link two
>>separate files! For example, I've recorded a transaction in the Business
>>accounts which I need to mirror in my personal accounts (this is the reason
>>I had the two sets of account in the one file to start with!)
>>    
>>
>
>There's no automated way to do so.  From time to time I start two copies
>of GnuCash and manually compare the transactions in the Equity:Draw
>account with the personal side of things. 
>
You can't expect an automated linkage for one very simple reason.

Assume for a moment that you were doing the accounting for a number of 
small businesses and personal accounting for a number of people. These 
would of course be separate sets of books, no linkage between them. Any 
of these persons would be obtaining income from various sources, you 
would enter that as data is received. Likewise any of those businesses 
might be supplying income to persons, "drawings" it is called.

The business writes a check to one of its owners, not an expense but a 
draw against that owner's equity.
The person receives and deposits the check recording income.

See -- we haven't specified here that the books of the business and the 
books of the owner are being maintained by the same accountant, on the 
same computer, using the same software, etc. Whatever we do HAS to work 
irregardless. The question being asked for an automated connection 
represents a VERY special case situation where just by chance the same 
person is doing both sets of books, on the same computer, using the same 
application, etc.

BTW -- need to get an accountant to speak here as I am not qualified to 
give tax advice, but I suspect that at end of year you would need to do 
more than compare drawings and "income from business" (depending on the 
form of the business, business income not yet distributed to the owners 
but retained by the business might nevertheless need to be considered 
"income from business" for tax purposes).

Michael

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.