Subsidiary virtual accounts

[Mark Phillips]

> My self-employed business does not
> have its own bank account - money goes into and out of the household cheque
> account, but it needs to be accounted separately for tax purposes.
>

Cliff, I suggest you make your life much easier and get a separate checking
account for your business. I don't know the cost of checking accounts in
the UK (I assume you are in the UK given your email address...), but in the
US they are cheap, and banks usually combine the balances of all your
accounts to help you get over the min balance requirements. There are many
ways to reduce/eliminate the fees for multiple accounts. Talk to a
"business banker" at your branch for some ideas. They aren't called
relationship bankers for nothing. If your bank is not helpful, shop around
- there will be one that wants your kind of business.

Just my two cents based on my experience with running a household set of
books, my company's set of books, and two non-profits (also mine) set of
books.

As far as GNUcash is concerned, either using separate files or one file is
a personal choice. Personally, I use separate files as the interactions
between the accounts are just transfers of cash which is easy to
implement/track across multiple files. In the File menu of GnuCash there is
a list of the last used files, so switching is a matter of picking an item
from a menu; no need to stop and start the whole program.

Mark