[GNC] Reporting combinations of accounts

[Maf. King]

On Thursday, 30 April 2020 10:30:04 BST Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton wrote:
> Thanks Maf,
> 
> You're right it's not a big deal, there aren't many additional calculations
> to do, and they're easy calculations. But hey, GC is an accounting system
> and it can do the sums needed for our tax reports, so I thought the most
> elegant solution is to have GC do those calculations. If it can't,  OK I'll
> just do them outside GC. That's not a deal breaker for using GC.
> 
> The same principles apply to other joint investments, e.g. in finance
> markets or in property that you let (you don't have to establish a separate
> business to buy and let property). In our case there are 7 categories of
> joint income and expenditure that we have to split 50:50. Still, manually
> calculating (amount=A + 0.5 * B) fourteen times isn't such a big deal.
> 
> Your three book solution sounds good, but at the moment I keep "me", "her"
> and "us" all in one book and I think I'll keep it that way. Partly, we
> consider it all "ours" anyway, and one book makes it possible to have an
> overview of everything we have and do. Plus all our separate income goes
> into the same joint account, so one book makes it easier to handle income.
> Plus the UK government allows unlimited "gifts" to be made between partners
> without being reported, and having everything in one book makes it easier
> to transfer directly between any accounts regardless of the "owners",
> without having to record it as an expense from one book and an income to
> another.
> 
> The original questioner suggested a transaction to split tax-reportable
> joint accounts on the last day of the tax year. I'm thinking this could be
> done as a scheduled transaction repeating at the end of each tax year. But
> as far as I can see, you can't schedule a transaction to transfer 50% of
> the balance of account A to account B and 50% to C. On the other hand you
> can schedule to transfer X/2 from A to B and X/2 from A to C, and then
> enter X. Then I'd have 7 values of X to enter by looking at current
> balances. Reasonably easy, albeit cumbersome, and I'd get complete accurate
> tax reports directly out of GC.
> 
> Other suggestions welcome!
> 
> Ruaraidh
> 

I always followed the maxim of "1 set of books per legal entity", hence I have 
6 or 7 (more or less) regularly used data files. There are pros-and-cons to 
either approach, of course.

The only other suggestion for "complex reporting" that leaps to mind is to 
stuff GC's report output it into a spreadsheet and do the 50% splits there.  

HTH,
Maf.