[GNC] two instances on different books

[Stan Brown (using GC 4.14)]

On 2024-08-14 08:35, Brook Milligan via gnucash-user wrote:
> I have a situation in which I have to manage a pair of books, one from the perspective of each side of some of the transactions.  An example would be if I am managing books for both a company and a customer, but in my case the two entities are much more closely coupled than suggested by that example.  Because some (many) of the transactions must be entered in both books yet refer to the same activity, I was thinking that having both open at once would allow immediate checking that transactions match, simply by looking from one window to the other.

If these two entities are all that "closely coupled", why have them in
separate books? If they're in the same book, it is much easier to make
sure that both sides of a transaction between them are entered correctly.

The paragraph below is just off the top of my head. The subject of two
entities in one book has been discussed here before, and others' ideas
on that are probably better than mine.

You can set up a single chart of accounts in one book, with some sort of
unique short tag in each account name to show which entity it belongs
to. (XX and YY are possible choices, since they are certain never to
occur in account names in English.) You would create and save report
configurations that select only the Entity 1 tag or only the Entity 2
tag. Or you could create two top-level accounts, Entity 1 and Entity 2,
with Entity 1 Assets, Entity 1 Liabilities, and so on under Entity 1,
and similarly (but not necessarily all the same subaccounts) under Entity 2.

Stan Brown
Tehachapi, CA, USA
https://BrownMath.com/