Combined Personal plus Businesses in same file
Mike or Penny Novack
stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Wed Apr 9 08:07:20 EDT 2008
>>>I want to keep all transactions in the same file.
>>>
>Thank you. My past experience indicates that the
>"one-taxable-entity-per-file" model will not work for me. My entities are
>separate taxable entities (corporations)
>
Could you perhaps better define what you mean by "in one file". I am
having a little difficulty understanding precisely what you mean here,
what you say these other applications are doing -- because separate
entities require separate sets of "books" whether these are all stored
in one file or not (GnuCash can certainly be told to store them all in
the same directory (file folder, but if you plan to switch to linux
might as well learn the correct term).
Are you saying that these (other) applications are allowing you to, with
a single entry, post a split transaction to several sets of books? I am
not sure I understand precisely how this would be possible in the sense
that the "other" set of books might or might not exists, might or might
not be YOUR books, etc. I better give you an example?
Nature of transaction:
Corporation Y sells an item of its property to person X. Now that's
and increase of the corporation's cash, a decrease in one of its assets
-- in balance. And for the books of person X we have a decrease of case
and an increase of assets. BUT (and this is a big but) not yet have we
said whether that person X was yourself (and you are keeping books, and
you say in the same file) or an unrelated person who may or may not be
keeping any books at all let alone on a system to which you have any
access. Or ... to person Y. That's exactly the same sort of transaction.
How does this other application "know" that X keeps his or her (or its)
books on your computer and Y doesn't or even that this other set of
books exists? I simply can't understand how this might work, and
understand, I used to make my living designing financial "systems".
If ALL you are asking is "can GnuCash keep as many sets of books as
I need in one directory so that with a single back-up operation I can
save all of the books together", why of course it can. Just because the
default would be create a set of books "anywhere" (scattered data)
doesn't mean that you can't change that. I have the data for the
organizattion for which I am Treasurer set up so that all books, saved
exported reports (HTML), and even the finished reports after
reformatting and annotation by our legal-accounting person (ie --
converted into reports/statements as specifed by GAAP for non-profits)
stored in a single directory.
But if you are asking "can GnuCash somehow "know" that the books of
the entity on the other side of this transaction are on the same
computer system, find them, and automatically create the transaction
there?" -- no. And I don't understand how some other application could
(some piece of the process you left out? connected to this "tag"
business? tags indicate "inside" vs "outside"?
Michael
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