[GNC] two instances on different books

[David Cousens]

Brook 
Where you may possibly encounter problems in having two related
entities within the one set of books will be with the business features
which AFAIK are designed with only a single entity in mind.

I keep my and my wife's personal finances in one set of books but use
subaccounts to keep our individual assets separate for example, but
while we were both operating businesses, the businesses were always in
separate books even though our personal finances were in the one set of
books (a reporting requirement as my business was a company structure
while my wife's was a sole trader). I often had the three sets of books
open simultaneously. Just had to check the filename at the top of the
window to be clear which set I was working on.  

Gnucash has a pretty good separation of the book preferences from what
are user preferences but there will always be cases where you want
different display preferenceson different books.

David

On Wed, 2024-08-14 at 10:07 -0600, Brook Milligan via gnucash-user
wrote:
> 
> > On Aug 14, 2024, at 9:58 AM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14)
> > <stan+gc at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion.  I have already been doing something like
> that, but ran into problems handling the transactions consistently.
> 
> Mainly, that was because I was not aware that I could create new top
> level accounts to differentiate the entities; I appreciate knowing
> that is possible.  This, I think, will solve all the issues I can
> think of now.
> 
> Nevertheless, if anyone has other suggestions, I would greatly
> appreciate knowing.
> 
> Thanks a lot for your help.  Once again, this list is a great
> resource.
> 
> Cheers,
> Brook
> 
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