[GNC] How to manage multiple accounts (as in separate gnucash? databases)?

[Robert Heller]

There is a MacOS / MS-Windows -centric concept of organizing a user's file
space by file *types* (I don't know for sure if Steve Jobs or some brainiac at
M$ came up with this notion). So most (all?) GUI desktops initialize a user's
file space with a set of "folders": Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music,
Downloads, and a few others and the various desktop apps default to storing /
finding files in one of these folders. Some of us (old school UNIX users?)
find this file space organization silly / strange / counter-useful. 

Instead we have top-level directories ("folder" is a strange term) that 
represent specific jobs or projects or something like that and then gather all 
of the various *different* files that relate to that job, project, etc. 
togther.  So instead of the documents living under Documents and the pictures 
living under Pictures, etc. the documents (eg letters) and pictures, and so on 
for a partitular job, project, or whatever, would all be collected together in 
a directory for the job, project, or whatever.

At Wed, 27 Apr 2022 09:10:49 +0100 Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:

> 
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 06:10:21PM -0400, Michael or Penny Novack wrote:
> > On 4/26/2022 11:25 AM, Chris Green wrote:
> 
> > > The --nofile option tells gnucash not to open the last accounts
> > > database, it helps a little, but I really want it to forget more!
> > > 
> > It may be confusing things slightly when you shorten "book of accounts" to
> > "accounts" instead of "books" << we usually refer to the financial records
> > of an entity as "its books" --- in days of yore when the records were kept
> > pen and ink on paper the "journal" and "ledgers" WERE books (bound volumes
> > of accounting paper) >>
> > 
> Yes, I never quite know what to call a GnuCash data file.  As you say
> 'account' is confusing because GnuCash has multiple 'accounts' within
> one file/database.
> 
> 
> > Why is remembering in what directory the records for an entity are kept
> > easier than remembering the name of the entity?
> 
> Because it makes a whole lot more sense (for me anyway) to keep
> everything to do with one set of books in one place.  So, for my
> church accounts for one particular year I have a directory:-
> 
>     ~/pcc/2022
> 
> This is very simple to remember and find.  (PCC is Parochial Church
> Council).  I have the GnuCash accounts files there, and copies of
> letters I have sent, and copies of incoming cheques and records for
> GiftAid plus anything else relevant.  
> 

-- 
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