Fwd: Multi-company accounting - shared account

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Conor McGarry <conormcgarry at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Marcus
>
> The companies don't share accounts.
>
> Given the current GnuCash setup, having only 1 root account to hold all the
> other accounts doesn't allow me to properly setup multi-companies within the
> one file.  Equity, Income&Expenses and Assets&Liabilities cannot be mixed
> within the same tree.
>
> Also, the accounting entry for an intercompany transaction has at least 4
> splits.
>
> e.g. A pays B €1, the accounting entry would be as follows:
>
> *Company A*
> Credit cash €1
> Debit intercompany loan €1
> *Company B*
> Credit intercompany loan €1
> Debit cash €1

If the companies do not share accounts then I can only see a couple
reasons for keeping them all in a single data file:

1) The ease for entering transactions between the companies.  In
   particular, you can enter a single transaction have have it appear
   in both sets of books.
2) Speed of opening datafiles to move from one set of books to
   another.  Yes, swapping between 75 different data files is
   a lot of overhead, so I can understand why you want them all
   together.

However there is a downside of having them all combined.  If you ever
sell one of your companies you cannot easily export the books from that
one company in order to provide it to the next entity to run it.

If each company is a truly independent operation then really it should
be run that way, which means separate data files and separate
transaction entries.  The fact that you happen to run all 75 is
a nicety, but legally you might be required to track them separately.
Or not.  I don't know your local laws.

Just my $0.02.

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available