Accounts structure for a worker cooperative (read: partnership) with expense accounts

[Benjamin Melançon]

We are a small collective, worker-owners each with an equal share in the
company.  We're moving to GnuCash for accounting and i have two questions
about equity accounts and expense accounts.

My first question is how to set up equity accounts.  This is for a worker
co-op, but any partnership would probably do the same.

The documentation mentions creating an Equity subaccount for each member as
an option —
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/accts-types1.html — which
i've done, but i'm not clear what we put in as a contribution should
balance *with*.  Practically, we started the company with nothing, and so
would be putting in our equity contributions from earnings.

Say our first income was a $12,000 check.  It goes in Assets:Current
Assets:Checking and is balanced by an entry in Income:Sales.  We could make
three transactions where three debits from Income:Sales is matched by a
credit each in Equity:Benjamin, Equity:Michele, Equity:Stefan?

Because we are all always going to have equal equity we could skip
accounting for it in Gnucash.  The second question is i think parallel in
how it would be structured and needs to be accounted for in GnuCash for our
regular operation:

How to set up accumulating expense accounts for each member.

The idea is that as long as it's business-related, we let members of the
collective control their own budgets.  This would probably also be
equivalent to giving departments their own budget.  If the money isn't
spent one month, it accumulates in the expense account for later months.

I've read how this would be best covered by categories or tags, a feature
GnuCash doesn't have, but i think there is in fact value to doing it with
real accounts, if i can figure out what balances with what.

We can create Assets:Current Assets:Expenses_Benjamin etc., and move $500
each month in there from Income:Sales?  But then in looking at an expense
imported into Assets:Current Assets:Checking i'm just not sure how to say
it's coming from Assets:Current Assets:Expenses_Benjamin and going to
Expenses:Office Supplies, say.

Am i close or far off?

I have searched rather extensively for answers to this, and am eager to
contribute to documentation once we figure this out!

Thank you greatly for GnuCash and any help in using it,

ben

http://agaric.com