QWinHBRP: Can accounts be associated with specific businesses?

Unknown

I just purchased WinHBRP to keep track of multiple business activities and multiple properties, in addition to my personal accounts, all of which I have been tracking for years in MS-Money, using separate MS-Money files for each entity.  I was hoping with HBRP support for multiple businesses and rental properties, that I could eliminate file switching work-around.  I setup the first business (LLC), added accounts from my financial institution (which seemed to work great), and all was good.  When I added the second business (LLC), and added its accounts from my financial institution, the accounts show up in the same master list and are all associated with the first business.  Is there a way to attach accounts to a specific business, not just the first business that I created?

Tom Young

A Quicken file holds the accounting of some "entity" and you define that entity. 

But if you define an entity that has separate businesses inside it, and each business has, say, its own bank Account, then there's no way to specify that "Bank Account 1 can only be used to make entries that affect Business 1 and Bank Account 2 can only be used to make entries that affect Business 2."

UKR

In MS Money you had separate MS Money files for each business.
If that's what you need to do, you can do exactly the same in Quicken and keep separate Quicken data files for each business. Just click the File Menu, select New Quicken File, give the file a proper new name and start working with it.
To switch between business files click the File Menu. At the bottom of the menu you will see a list of up to 4 recently used Quicken data files to select from.

Unknown

Thanks for the advice.  It seems as though keeping business entities separate for tax-time reporting is more about proper "tagging" of individual transactions, than how I categorize accounts (personal vs business vs rental).  So, I am keeping my wholly owned business entities and self-employment businesses in a single Quicken file with my personal accounts and ensuring all transactions are tagged appropriately.  I did create a separate Quicken file to track a partnership business.  So far this approach seems to be working well, although a bit of effort was required to initially tag all 2018 transactions to the right business.  I actually had to do something similar in MS-Money, using a custom "Classification" tag.  So far I like Quicken and it's nice to be back on an actively developed and supported accounting software.

q_lurker

Peter Clairmont said:

Thanks for the advice.  It seems as though keeping business entities separate for tax-time reporting is more about proper "tagging" of individual transactions, than how I categorize accounts (personal vs business vs rental).  So, I am keeping my wholly owned business entities and self-employment businesses in a single Quicken file with my personal accounts and ensuring all transactions are tagged appropriately.  I did create a separate Quicken file to track a partnership business.  So far this approach seems to be working well, although a bit of effort was required to initially tag all 2018 transactions to the right business.  I actually had to do something similar in MS-Money, using a custom "Classification" tag.  So far I like Quicken and it's nice to be back on an actively developed and supported accounting software.

I think that is exactly the right way to manage your setup. If you do keep really separate accounts (checking, cc, etc.) you can name those accordingly and also save applicable customized reports for each business.

Tom Young

Peter Clairmont said:

Thanks for the advice.  It seems as though keeping business entities separate for tax-time reporting is more about proper "tagging" of individual transactions, than how I categorize accounts (personal vs business vs rental).  So, I am keeping my wholly owned business entities and self-employment businesses in a single Quicken file with my personal accounts and ensuring all transactions are tagged appropriately.  I did create a separate Quicken file to track a partnership business.  So far this approach seems to be working well, although a bit of effort was required to initially tag all 2018 transactions to the right business.  I actually had to do something similar in MS-Money, using a custom "Classification" tag.  So far I like Quicken and it's nice to be back on an actively developed and supported accounting software.

"Thanks for the advice.  It seems as though keeping business entities
separate for tax-time reporting is more about proper "tagging" of
individual transactions, than how I categorize accounts (personal vs
business vs rental). "

Yes, assuming that all that activity actually gets reported on your personal Form 1040.  Obviously you would keep out of that file businesses that file their own income tax return, even if they don't pay taxes.  So that separate file for the partnership is the way to go.