Multiple account names

[John Morris]

And now a word from a heretic. I am also in the situation of keeping books for multiple entities. Since GnuCash takes so long to load a different file, I find it very inconvenient to work with a separate file for each entity. I have simply set up two top-level accounts (assets/liabilities and income/expense) for each entity and all accounts for each entity are housed in the respective top-level accounts. This keeps the books completely separate from each other while giving me instant access to all the entities' books at the same time. Of course, it is up to me to be careful not to cross the boundary, but that is relatively easy to do with a good naming convention and autofilled transactions.

John

> On Nov 9, 2016, at 8:33 AM, Mike or Penny Novack <mpnovack at mtdata.com> wrote:
> 
> Explanation --- if (except for the data entered) the two sets of books, when open, look very identical, there is always the chance of having the wrong one open. The suggestion by David is to have some VERY visible difference. The time "wasted" by a one time editing of all the account names (say a prefix) would be dwarfed by the time you would lose if you EVER by mistake of entering one organization's transactions into the other one's books. Especially if you did not notice immediately.
> 
> Michael D Novack