Dividing accounts in multiple branches

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Dieter wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I'm new to gnucash, I've read some parts of user guides regarding the
>accounts structure but I'm still wondering how to implement the following:
>
>Lets say I've got a farm with different branches: 1) milking cows; 2) pigs;
>3)crop1: potatoes; 4)crop2: corn. For each of these branches I'd like to set
>up 3 basic accounts (income, variable expense, fixed expense) which may have
>subaccounts which vary according to the branch.
>
>There are 4 requirements for this setup:
>1) I must be able to get info/summary for each branch separately.
>2) It must be possible to relate branches, for example: a part of the
>variable cost of crop2:corn is entered as a subaccount of the variable cost
>of the milking cows.
>3) It must be possible to have certain subaccounts to be entered in multiple
>branches, for example: the expense 'BARN' is partially entered in the fixed
>cost of crop1:potatoes and partially entered in the fixed cost of milking
>cows.
>4) It must be possible to create an overview/summary of the entire farm to
>get some sort of an end result.
>
>How does one implement such a thing with GNUcash, I have no other experience
>with bookkeeping software...
>  
>
Dieter,
   My first question to you would be (leaving aside the matter of ANY 
accounting software) do you understand how you would do this? Say in old 
fashioned bookkeeping pen and ink on paper? If you did, then you would 
perhaps be aware that in the RAW books it wouldn't likely look like that 
BUT this would not prevent you from (later) preparing reports that would 
(re)group income and expenses for each sub-enterprise of the farm so you 
would see the profit/loss situation for cows, pigs, crop1, crop2, etc. 
But see note*.

   However, you COULD do what you want as soon as you realize that it's 
all really debits and credits in spite of the way these columns are 
labeled in income or expense accounts. In other words, under the 
"income" COWS you would have BOTH income and (in effect) expense child 
accounts with the latter defined as income accounts (so they could be 
children of an income account BUT in which you entered amounts on the 
other side of the ledger. I do NOT suggest that (if you could do this 
correctly, enough accounting background, you wouldn't have asked your 
question). Instead I suggest you have a COWS tree in income and a COWS 
tree in expense and later from the data of the Income Statement you can 
regroup as your heart desires (export report, copy that data into a 
document of your favorite editor, and move things around.

   As to how an expense (say related to corn growing) gets allocated to 
expenses under cows, pigs, and crop2 see "split transactions" and that 
most certainly is covered in the guide.

Michael

PS: Numbering accounts with a suitably clever scheme can help you when 
regrouping

Michael

* I know enough about farming to realize that sometimes the 
profitability (or lack of profit) of a sub enterprise can be misleading 
because of the way different parts of the farm interact. For example, an 
oat crop might not be particularly profitable but nevertheless a vital 
component of a corn, oat+legume seed), legume rotation as might be used 
on a dairy farm here. The important legume (for hay of haylage and 
replace nitrogen used by the corn) benefited from the nurse crop of oats.