personal and business

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>
>I've been running a small consulting company for 14 years.  Initially I used Quicken, but about 3 years I switched over to Gnucash, and have never looked back!
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>I have one chart of accounts for BOTH my business and personal accounts.  I have current (bank) accounts for both.  I don't use Gnucash to produce reports that I submit to the tax authorities, but I do produce reports that my accountant uses.  I track receivables and VAT for the business.
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>I have to 'trees' of Expenses and Income - HE (for home Expenses) and HI (for home - or personal - income).  Similarly I have BE (for Business expenses) and BI for Business Income.
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>It works great for me - I have probably a couple of hundred transactions a month (credit card, banking and business).  I produce the reports I need to complete the VAT submissions in a couple of minutes.
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>The double work of keeping two separate sets of books would kill me - keeping them reconciled would drive me insane!
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>So (going against what every one else has suggested) I'd say keeping the one set is feasible, and a lot simpler. I don't dispute that a 'proper' accountant might advise against it - just keep an eye on whether this strategy is right for you!
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>  
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This calls for a comment. Oweson appears to be keeping two LOGICAL sets 
of books within one "physical" set of books and that's something in 
between keeping two separate sets of books and keeping just a single set 
of books. He knew how to set this up for himself. Probably knew more 
than a little bookkeeping to begin with? That is a solution for those 
who want to eliminate having to double enter those transactions that 
split between personal and business or between personal books of more 
than one person*.

Tricky to set up properly which I why I haven't suggested it as a 
solution. I'm not sure I'd care to tackle the "how to" guide for this. 
If as he appears to have done you set up "trees" properly you can 
produce the necessary reports (for each set of logical books) without 
too much trouble. Before trying this you should have a very clear idea 
how you do "single entity" books. I would say that if you need help with 
those, don't try this.

1) Each entity could have its own asset, liability, and equity tree (and 
income and expense).
2) You do reports (for each entity) including just its accounts.
3) Don't JUST check that the entire set of books is in balance. Each 
entity needs to be in balance too.

Michael

* We've been asked about this before (multiple person books). This is 
how you would do it.