handling multiple entities in single book : issue with trading accounts

[Wm]

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 15:28:40 
<CAB2pxDsgGCceuRYbsciYK+jNt6-wR9AgXkuSB7KNuyddofyO4g at mail.gmail.com> 
Sébastien de Menten <sdementen at gmail.com>

>On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 3:50 PM, Wm <wm+gnc at tarrcity.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Tue, 13 Jan 2015 06:34:46 <CAB2pxDuwUD_EuG8+WARVPxTB6phFtw00g9ojxOfK9wK1Su
>> +a_g at mail.gmail.com> Sébastien de Menten <sdementen at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>  I am handling in a single book all accounts and transactions of my couple,
>>> essentially, myself, my wife and a "common" assets (whatever we put in
>>> common).
>>> I have created a typical account structure for each of the 3 "persons"
>>> adding the name of the person just before the 1st level, i.e.:
>>>
>>> Assets / My wife / Current Assets / Checking Account
>>> Assets / Me / Current Assets / Checking Account
>>> Assets / Common / Current Assets / Checking Account
>>>
>>> and this for all accounts (equity, expenses, etc).
>>>
>>
>> Is this right?  Shouldn't it be
>>
>> Assets / Common
>> Assets / Common / Seb partner
>> Assets / Common / Seb
>>
>> Why ?

>I want to have in a single gnucash document (file or SQL DB)  Books for
>different persons/entities.

OK, that is a desire that is achievable or not achievable depending on 
you and your other person or entities needs.  It is not a gnc issue yet.

>Why not having separate files for each person ? for personal multiple
>reasons :I want to have in a single place the global view of all persons,

>I
>want to be able to book in a single transaction transfer between accounts
>from different persons/books,

If you could do that between books would that change your need?

i.e. in an ideal world would you have bookSeb, bookSebPartner and 
bookJoint ?

> I want to define the commodities in a single
>place, I want to share the commodity prices, I want to have the same
>reports, etc.

good reasons but you must consider that my partner may have a different 
exchange for share ABC and country to me but we keep books together.

Which one should we use?  I say we record them separately and bring them 
together as needed when the tax people or similar ask.

>I do not think it is possible to have multiple books in a single file.

correct at present, gnc views a book (an undefined object, btw) as 
complete

>Therefore, I wanted to "emulate" the multiple books structure in some
>gnucash compatible way.

This is where you and I should be thinking together

>The first is to set, below the root account of gnucash 3 other root
>accounts (person 1, person 2 and common 1+2) to get the following account
>tree
>
>ROOT
>ROOT       person 1
>ASSET     person 1:Assets
>LIABILITY person 1:Liabilities
>INCOME     person 1:Income
>EXPENSE   person 1:Expenses
>ROOT       person 2
>ASSET     person 2:Assets
>LIABILITY person 2:Liabilities
>INCOME     person 2:Income
>EXPENSE   person 2:Expenses
>ROOT       common 1+2
>ASSET     common 1+2:Assets
>LIABILITY common 1+2:Liabilities
>INCOME     common 1+2:Income
>EXPENSE   common 1+2:Expenses
>
>
>While it works at first sight (see sample "multiple_roots.gnucash" in
>attachment), I fear Gnucash may not support that 100% down the road.
>
>So the second way is to move the person one way down the tree structure:
>
>ROOT
>ASSET     Assets
>ASSET     Assets:person 1
>ASSET     Assets:person 2
>ASSET     Assets:common 1+2
>LIABILITY Liabilities
>LIABILITY Liabilities:person 1
>LIABILITY Liabilities:person 2
>LIABILITY Liabilities:common 1+2
>INCOME     Income
>INCOME     Income:person 1
>INCOME     Income:person 2
>INCOME     Income:common 1+2
>EXPENSE   Expenses
>EXPENSE   Expenses:person 1
>EXPENSE   Expenses:person 2
>EXPENSE   Expenses:common 1+2
>
>
>which is what I described in my original email ... with the point about
>Trading account not being able to be split among persons.

You are doing it wrong, Sébastien, you have neglected Equity, again!

This will never make sense until you undrstand certain accounting 
things.

It is very simple, really: to introduce money into a "book" it has to 
come from somewhere

-- 
Wm...