Farmer Question

[Rachel Gibb]

Hi Jim, I wanted you to know that I have been using gnucash for our farm  
business going on 3 years now. I love it. I started with the program on a  
linux machine, now I use on my windows machine. I have all our accounts  
set up in the one system and pull out the ones to send to the accountant  
for our year end. This has worked real well with our personal and business  
expenses. I can keep track of everything we spend money on to help out  
with our personal budget as well.  We also have various sources of income  
like a seed plant, selling seed, etc.

I like the flexibility of gnucash for our business. I like the software so  
I can keep my accounting skill sharp as well. I am in Canada and tried the  
recommended agriculture software but I hated it. It did too much of the  
work for me and I felt a little lost. With gnucash I feel I have more  
control.

The only downside is I have to have a spreadsheet to send to the  
accountant making moving the amounts over to my spreadsheet program  
somewhat tedious and possibility for error. Maybe some day I can figure  
out that part of things better, but for now I am quite pleased and the  
accountant has been too.

Hope this helps with your decision!

Cheers,
Rachel

On Tue, 09 Jan 2018 17:14:00 -0600, James Meade <jnmeade at southslope.net>  
wrote:

> I've used Quicken for years and am considering switching to gnucash  
> mainly because Quicken is going to a subscription pay model and I don't  
> want to be held hostage by it or by an operating system (I always have  
> in the back of my mind to swithc from Windows to Linux).  I know little  
> of accounting.  In reading the manuals, I have a number of questions  
> about setting up the gnucash system.
>
> 1.  I have several checking accounts and use them all for both personal  
> and business use.  It seems unfeasible to set up two sets of books.   
> Can/how do I separate personal from business in one set of books?
>
> 2.  I have several credit cards, use them the same way as checking.  How  
> do I set up several credit card sub accounts, e.g., notional names AB  
> Visa, CD Mastercard, EF Visa, etc., and separate purchases for business  
> and personal?
>
> 3.  I do all my data entry manually and am not going to change.
>
> 4.  I have several income streams, including farming, flight  
> instruction, writing, custom farming (e.g., mowing or plowing for  
> someone else), military retirement, social security benefits.  Some are  
> business and some are personal.  Any thing to consider when I set them  
> up?
>
> As I see it, my main uncertainties are about mixing personal and  
> business and about having a number of different accounts of the same  
> type that are used for both personal and business (i.e., checking and  
> credit cards).
>
> It occurs to me that if  I have to ask these questions the prospect of  
> using double-entry bookkeeping may be more than I should attempt.  If  
> you think that is the case feel free to say so.  I'm trying to figure  
> out if I want to go this way.  I tried QuickBooks about 8-10 years ago  
> and gave it up after a couple of months.  I have the time and energy to  
> put in, just not sure if I'm smart enough.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
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