separating temporary project funding from company profit

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>
>I probably have a similar problem. We are running multiple type of
>businesses and need to track the resource spent on / revenue generated
>by each type of business. However each type of business need similar
>expense and income accounts.
>
>Now we have account hierarchy like "Expense:Utilities", I am thinking
>splitting it into "Expense:BusinessType1:Utilities",
>"Expense:BusinessType2:Utilities", "Expense:BusinessType3:Utilities"...
>
>That means I am going to create 4 times more accounts than before. Does
>my approach make sense?
>
>I also think maybe I can add a "keyword" in each expense transaction,
>and ask the report generator to generate reports by filtering these
>keywords. Does this sound more reasonable than my last approach?
>  
>
Actually there are a number of possible approaches and there are factors 
to take into account other than the mechanics of GnuCash.

For example, you MIGHT want a separate set of books for each of those 
"divisions" and at periodic intervals the net profit/loss and changes in 
"investment" transferred to the main books of the overall enterprise. 
You might want that if the "management" of these divisions of the 
business were separate and there is no "need to know" each other's 
details and it might make things easier when either selling off a 
division or trying to get an outside partner for one (making it a "joint 
venture"). In both those examples makes sense for a division to be able 
to show/see JUST it's own transactions. Then there are procedural 
considerations. Just what are your work practices for whoever does the 
bookkeeping for each enterprise. Same person of different persons, and 
if the same person, does that person jump back and forth or enter the 
transactions for one enterprise then move on to the next (less likely to 
accidentally put a transaction into an account of the wrong enterprise)

What does your accountant want you to do?

Michael