Money 2006 and multiple Sole Proprietorships

We are interested in using Money 2006 to manage family finances as well as
the finances of at least three small proprietorships, two of which are likely
to incorporate sometime in the next two years.

It appears that Money (Small Business Edition) cannot manage multiple
business entities in the same file, so the obvious workaround is to have
separate files for home and each of the business entities.

My questions:

1. Is it indeed correct that Money Small Business cannot track multiple
entities in the same file?

2. Is it possible to share information between Money files (such as money
moving from family finances to business finances and back, name and address
data, etc)?

3. Is it possible to create reports and charts showing overall financial
status for all tracked entities (1 home + 3 businesses)? In other words, is
it possible to create multi-file or cross-file reports/graphs/charts (perhaps
with the use of some intermediary file that collects the data from the
others)? If his can be done without relying on Excel (and sacrifing the nice
Money formats), I'd be thrilled.

4. Are there any best practices publications/sites I can look to for advice
on managing multiple RELATED Money files?

Thanks!
Gilad

Cal
Wed Feb 15 15:21:44 CST 2006

In microsoft.public.money, Gilad wrote:

>We are interested in using Money 2006 to manage family finances as well as
>the finances of at least three small proprietorships, two of which are likely
>to incorporate sometime in the next two years.
>
>It appears that Money (Small Business Edition) cannot manage multiple
>business entities in the same file, so the obvious workaround is to have
>separate files for home and each of the business entities.
>
>My questions:
>
>1. Is it indeed correct that Money Small Business cannot track multiple
>entities in the same file?

I don't think so. You can create separate categories for each
business, and in the tax line manager route the different categories
to different schedule Cs (or Es or Fs).

Banking->AccountTools->Accounts&Bills->Categories&Payees->SetUpTaxCatagories

Note on the part at the bottom, "Form copy" is one of the things
that you can associate with each category. One business might use
categories that go on copy 1 of schedule C, and so on.

That said, things can probably be complex. There may still be an
advantage to separate files. However your item 2, and 3 would be
*no" with separate files.


>
>2. Is it possible to share information between Money files (such as money
>moving from family finances to business finances and back, name and address
>data, etc)?
>
>3. Is it possible to create reports and charts showing overall financial
>status for all tracked entities (1 home + 3 businesses)? In other words, is
>it possible to create multi-file or cross-file reports/graphs/charts (perhaps
>with the use of some intermediary file that collects the data from the
>others)? If his can be done without relying on Excel (and sacrifing the nice
>Money formats), I'd be thrilled.
>
>4. Are there any best practices publications/sites I can look to for advice
>on managing multiple RELATED Money files?