Combined Personal plus Businesses in same file

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>>>I want to keep all transactions in the same file. 
>>>
>Thank you. My past experience indicates that the
>"one-taxable-entity-per-file" model will not work for me. My entities are
>separate taxable entities (corporations)
>
Could you perhaps better define what you mean by "in one file". I am 
having a little difficulty understanding precisely what you mean here, 
what you say these other applications are doing -- because separate 
entities require separate sets of "books" whether these are all stored 
in one file or not (GnuCash can certainly be told to store them all in 
the same directory (file folder, but if you plan to switch to linux 
might as well learn the correct term).

Are you saying that these (other) applications are allowing you to, with 
a single entry, post a split transaction to several sets of books? I am 
not sure I understand precisely how this would be possible in the sense 
that the "other" set of books might or might not exists, might or might 
not be YOUR books, etc. I better give you an example?

Nature of transaction:
    Corporation Y sells an item of its property to person X. Now that's 
and increase of the corporation's cash, a decrease in one of its assets 
-- in balance. And for the books of person X we have a decrease of case 
and an increase of assets. BUT (and this is a big but) not yet have we 
said whether that person X was yourself (and you are keeping books, and 
you say in the same file) or an unrelated person who may or may not be 
keeping any books at all let alone on a system to which you have any 
access. Or ... to person Y. That's exactly the same sort of transaction. 
How does this other application "know" that X keeps his or her (or its) 
books on your computer and Y doesn't or even that this other set of 
books exists? I simply can't understand how this might work, and 
understand, I used to make my living designing financial "systems".

     If ALL you are asking is "can GnuCash keep as many sets of books as 
I need in one directory so that with a single back-up operation I can 
save all of the books together", why of course it can. Just because the 
default would be create a set of books "anywhere" (scattered data) 
doesn't mean that you can't change that. I have the data for the 
organizattion for which I am Treasurer set up so that all books, saved 
exported reports (HTML), and even the finished reports after 
reformatting and annotation by our legal-accounting person (ie -- 
converted into reports/statements as specifed by GAAP for non-profits) 
stored in a single directory.

    But if you are asking "can GnuCash somehow "know" that the books of 
the entity on the other side of this transaction are on the same 
computer system, find them, and automatically create the transaction 
there?" -- no. And I don't understand how some other application could 
(some piece of the process you left out? connected to this "tag" 
business? tags indicate "inside" vs "outside"?

Michael