Multi-company accounting

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Conor McGarry wrote:

>This new "organizational" account type would be perfect.  Could it be
>developed?
>  
>
I'll jump in here as business analyst?

There are TWO issues that look like one only because solving one of 
these in a certain way (if were possible) might eliminate the pressing 
need for the other.

1) In the special case scenario where one bookkeeper just happens to be 
keeping the books for two business entities, identify on the fly any 
transaction that happens to be between these two entities and generate 
the corresponding transaction. I will come back to why this probably is 
impossible.

2) In the above situation, have an automated reconciliation program that 
can spot when a transaction is between two or more of these companies 
and check that a corresponding entry exists in the other set of books. 
Eliminate the work of doing this reconciliation by hand even if the 
transactions have to be entered individually.

Note on 2 --- That could be a stand alone which takes as input the 
files. It would be necessary that SOMETHING entered in the transaction 
(probably in the description) identified the "inter" relationship. 
Adjunct function of GnuCash which would not affect anything else.

Michael D Novack

Note on 1 --- Conor might know that his situation is extremely 
restricted and so not see why I would immediately judge "impossible"
a) The fact that a transaction affecting company A is known to affect 
company B does NOT give you any information about what accounts of 
company B are affected. To give an extremely simple example --- company 
A is sending a payment by check to company B but company A has 
absolutely no control/knowledge about into which of company B's current 
accounts the funds are to be deposited. Conor might be considering just 
the extremely restricted transfer "all transfers between these companies 
are wire between known accounts" -- but even here not enough information 
to identify the name of that account in company B's books.
b) More important, how does company A know the other side of the 
transaction for company B? When entering this transaction in company A's 
books you know not only what account will make the payment but what 
expense or liability to debit. Even if you knew which account in company 
B's books to debit with the transfer, how do you know which to credit?
c) This isn't 1:1 unless there is a further restriction. In the general 
case, a transaction could be between N of these entities.