personal and business

[Dave (DavesTechShop.net)]

Happy 2011 to everyone. Thanks for all the feedback. I did some googling and
found a few things to read on the topic of mixed transactions and logical
partitioning, but if anyone has good links related to these topics, I would
appreciate receiving them. I didn't find much other than this thread that
really addressed my questions. (Incidently, for some reason I am only
receiving part of the responses to this thread...)

The message<http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/personal-and-business-tp3161568p3167944.html>from
Oweson
seems to be the most interesting, so I think I'm going to try that. My
sentiment is about the same as Brad's -- using multiple files doesn't seem
satisfactory. Oweson's logical separation seems worth a try.

I saw Michael's
warning<http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/personal-and-business-tp3161568p3168672.html>
about
the challenges of using more than one set of *logical* books in a single
physical file. BTW, I greatly appreciated having a name/concept for this
approach. (I would really appreciate any additional links related to this
topic!)

As I said, everything I do is passed through a real accountant who simply
uses it as input for a proper system of accounting and reporting. My
accountant balances everything against the actual bank statements, etc. He
handles all the required reporting.

Basically, all I have to do is categorize transactions. Hence my desire for
a simple, single-file solution.

To help me understand the logical partitioning, how would you generalize
this to multiple entities? For example, is this appropriate?

C-Corporation
+- Assets
+- Equity
+- Liabilities
Non-corporate
+- Entity A
  +--- Assets
  +--- Equity
  +--- Liabilities
+- Entity B
  +--- Assets
  +--- Equity
  +--- Liabilities
+- Personal
  +--- Assets
  +--- Equity
  +--- Liabilities

Thoughts?



On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Shane Litherland <
litherland-farm at bigpond.com> wrote:

> Hi Dave,
>
> you might find other good tips directly relating to downloading bank
> transactions and/or how to deal with mixed credit card txns, in old
> posts, if you can search thru archives etc here. Or check out general
> gnucash info relating to credit cards / liabilities. But you should be
> able to tweak my suggestions to deal with it OK,
> - possibly downloading all cc txns to a 'credit card' account (often,
> gnucash sets a credit card acct in 'liabilities' for many default
> setups)
> then, either pay the full amount out from business, and an adjustment
> for 'private drawings', or for each cc txn, you could mark the split as
> paid from business or private accordingly.
>
> That's not quite doing a full 'double-up' of the cc txn downloads but
> still involves a bit of manual checking through to post each expense to
> the right place... but it's probably good to keep tabs on what goes on
> your cc anyway huh? ;-)
>
> HNY to you too!
> -shane
>
>
> On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 14:18 -0500, Dave T wrote:
> > Hi Shane,
> > Thank you for your very helpful reply!
> >
> >
> > As I reflected on it more, my main requirement concerns credit card
> > accounts. I find it unavoidable that both personal and business
> > charges appear on my credit cards. Dealing with that appropriately
> > will be my main GnuCash challenge, I believe.
> >
> >
> > Without having used GnuCash, I don't know how others handle this. But
> > I want to avoid things like this:
> > - having to manually enter credit card (or other) transactions that
> > could be automatically downloaded/imported.
> > - having to download credit card (or other) transactions into two
> > separate files and then go through both sets of transactions to delete
> > business charges from one and personal charges from the other.
> >
> >
> > I believe your suggestions will help me achieve that goal. If I have
> > trouble, I'll post back.
> >
> >
> > Happy new year.
> > Dave
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 5:38 AM, Shane Litherland
> > <litherland-farm at bigpond.com> wrote:
> >         Hi Dave,
> >
> >         I've only gone part-way along combining personal/business,
> >         i.e. I
> >         basically use it for business records, but at times I have to
> >         account
> >         for expenses that have a private component, or I make private
> >         (cash)
> >         drawings.
> >
> >         So, how I do this might get you on the starting blocks at
> >         least:
> >
> >         example - I get a rates or electricity bill, and most is
> >         attributable to
> >         business expense, but some is private:
> >
> >         LIABILITIES:ACCOUNTS PAYABLE is where I put in the bill
> >         (invoice to be
> >         paid) in its entirety, and split the total:
> >
> >         EXPENSES:PRIVATE DRAWINGS:UTILITIES:RATES (say, 10% of total)
> >         EXPENSES:UTILITIES:RATES (the business amount, 90%)
> >
> >         (i've glossed over the inclusion of GST or similar taxes to
> >         keep this
> >         example clearer to start with)
> >
> >         I currently pay the bill 100% from my business cheque account
> >         ASSETS:CURRENT ASSETS:CHEQUE ACCOUNT
> >
> >         You could add a 'PRIVATE SAVINGS ACCOUNT' to your assets tree,
> >         and e.g.
> >         pay the relevant bills or portion of bills from each asset
> >         account.
> >
> >         To keep my whole expenses reports 'clean' for business
> >         reporting (i.e.
> >         only showing expenses that relate to business, not the private
> >         expenses), I do a transfer at the end of each period (in my
> >         case,
> >         financial year) from each EXPENSES:PRIVATE DRAWINGS:...
> >         subaccount, to
> >         an EQUITY:PARTNER CONTRIBUTIONS:... subaccount
> >
> >         If you don't mind having e.g. expense reports that show
> >         combined
> >         subtotals etc of private and business subaccounts then you can
> >         probably
> >         omit the latter step. Another variation, is to do the
> >         transfers to
> >         private equity, and if you want to run a report only showing
> >         business
> >         stuff, put an amount in for the transfer. If you want to 'see'
> >         the
> >         private amounts included in expenses and not bundled up in
> >         equity, just
> >         change the amount back to 0 if or when you want to run said
> >         reports.
> >
> >         I have another situation in Gnucash accts where some of my
> >         'business'
> >         income has to be attributed to me as 'personal services
> >         income' (e.g.
> >         consultancy/sub-contractor income) and reported on my personal
> >         tax
> >         return. For GNUCASH purposes, it is part of my business
> >         income/costs,
> >         but I have a string of about three sub-accounts to document
> >         that
> >         'private income' amount from the business INCOME account, to a
> >         LIABILITIES:PSI ATTRIBUTABLE and then on to EQUITY:MY
> >         CONTRIBUTIONS and
> >         EQUITY:RETAINED EARNINGS.
> >         This results in my 'equity / retained earnings' being a
> >         balance between
> >         the 'personal services income' and the amounts of any private
> >         expenses/drawings at the end of each period when I do any
> >         balancing
> >         transfers as mentioned above. This whole process probably
> >         warrants its
> >         own discussion so if you find you might be heading down that
> >         kind of
> >         path with your accounts trees, let me know, otherwise just
> >         consider it
> >         'food for thought'.
> >
> >         A final note, is that I enter all expenses as invoices, and
> >         use that
> >         aspect of GNUCASH that makes use of A/P and A/R but you can
> >         still go
> >         through the same process I've used by just entering split txns
> >         directly
> >         into a liabilities account/s.
> >
> >         Leave it at that for you to digest, let us know if it's any
> >         use :-)
> >
> >         -Shane
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>