Multiple Company Setup Question

[Don Ireland]

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone. After I got to thinking about it more, it's not like the asset (property) owned my each LLC will always have an up-to-date appraised value listed anyway.  So I guess the second issue is mostly moot.

The asset accounts will be fluid enough that I COULD track each company's value to a degree but that still wouldn't be accurate without an accurate appraisal.  I guess it might be more of an issue if I were in a different type of business with assets that didn't need appraisals.

On April 30, 2016 4:22:14 AM CDT, "Maf. King" <maf at chilwell.net> wrote:
>On Friday, 29 April 2016 19:01:07 BST Don Ireland wrote:
>> Hi All.  I'm trying to find and accounting solution for my real
>estate
>> investing business and could use some advice.
>> 
>> For asset protection purposes, each rental property is wholly owned
>by
>> an LLC.  Each LLC is wholly owned by my Solo 401(k) trust (the trust
>is
>> the single member of each LLC).  I am the trustee for the Trust and
>the
>> manager for each LLC.
>> 
>> I need to document all transactions for property a separately from
>those
>> for property b and so on.
>> 
>> If I were to use Quickbooks, I'd use a separate company file.  Whats
>the
>> best method with gnuCash?  Assuming that I'd use a separate file for
>> each company, is there a way for the parent company to automatically
>> show the child companies as assets?  Since gnuCash "knows" the value
>of
>> each companys' assets and liabilities, I think one could say that it
>> "knows" the value of each company.
>
>Hi Don,
>
>Welcome to the list.
>
>The usual advice is to keep each legal entity in its own file.
>
>I don't know of any way to have GC know the contents of multiple files
>and be 
>able to give you an overview of the trust's worth.  You might be able
>to do 
>something with saved report configurations that you run and export to a
>
>spreadsheet which does the  aggregation for you. 
>
>The other possibility is to do some reporting outside of GC if you are
>in any 
>way fluent in SQL.  There is a user on here by the name of Wm. who
>conducted 
>some SQL experiments he had carried out a year or two ago, I think he
>was 
>trying to combine several files into one "parent company" report.  Have
>a 
>search of the list archives for SQL Balance sheet around late Dec 2014
>to mid 
>Jan 2015, there are several possible threads of relevance.
>
>Of Course, you *could* use a single file and set the Chart of accounts
>up in 
>such a way that each property is self-contained as sub-books, but I
>think that 
>you would send up with a confusing set of similarly-named accounts and
>hence 
>much more scope for errors.  Depends if the total separation or global
>view is 
>more important to you, and of course, your local laws may have a
>preference, 
>too!
>
>HTH,
>Maf.
>
>
>
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Don Ireland