Need accounting advice

[Keith A. Milner]

On Wednesday 19 September 2007 12:52:44 Vahur Lokk wrote:
> Hello!
> I am getting into a strange business situation. My main business is
> freelance translation. Easy enough from the accounting point of view.
> Now I am making a contract with a big client, organisation that does
> film festivals. I am going to do all the subtitling project management
> for them. At least double my current turnover + hassle with
> subcontractors and all that PITA.
> This means that through the year will be few smaller (still big for me)
> festivals + huge one in the end of the year.
> I just finished the first small one and i feel quite uncomfortable,
> because I would like to monitor project costs separately.
>
> Can I organise gnucash so, that I create a separate file for every
> festival, using my usual account tree, do the project/festival
> accounting there, then, when everything is finished, import it into my
> main accounting file? This way I would have an overview of project
> profitability, cost control etc.
>
> If this is possible, then what limits/problems I will have, eg. how can
> I handle situation if, for some reason, I need to present a balance
> sheet during one of the festivals and therefore have to do an import of
> "unfinished" festival file?

Without analysing this too deeply, you may be able to do something useful 
with "Jobs".

For instance, I use jobs to represent individual projects for a customer. When 
I have bills associated with the project I mark them against the customer and 
job. When I raise an invoice I raise it against the job (and Gnucash allows 
prompts me to add expenses to the invoice if they are recharged).

Not sure about the reporting capability against jobs though.

regards,

-- 
Keith Milner