Getting Started for 2010

[Mike or Penny Novack]

CFreestone wrote:

>Thank you for this  opportunity. We have just installed gnucash and I am trying to learn how to navigate around. 
>
>Our situation is that we have a revocable trust which owns all of our assets, and rents out three units (two offices and an apartment). 
>
>We do our day to day business from our personal check book.
>
Stop right there.

We can advise you how to make USE of GnuCash instead of old fashioned 
accounting pen and ink on paper. But we can't advise about the 
accounting requirements themselves, especially when in reference to a 
situation which is clearly special. And we probably shouldn't be 
advising how to get around the problems introduced by co-mingling of funds.

If you found yourself in need of a revocable trust holding your assets I 
think you need professional accounting help to set up:
a) the trust's books
b) the business's books
c) your personal books
And to show you how transactions between these should be handled.  Don't 
even think of trying to do this in one set of GnuCash books (one 
installation of GnuCash can handle any number of books). And you should 
really think long and hard whether not having a separate checking 
account for the business is a good idea (you can handle the then rare 
times where you used your personal account to pay a business expense  as 
a liability of the business to you that is later reimbursed).

Michael