Splasm Software Discussions

I want to be able to track a simple discretionary checking account for the church I serve, but obviously do not want to combine this with my personal accounts in CBPro. Neither do I want to create another user account on my laptop in order to do this. I also do not want to purchase another financial software program, primarily because nothing is as good for my needs as CBPro is (trust me, I've tried them all out and nothing beats the elegance and ease of use and flexibility as CBPro!).

Any ideas? I suppose I could purchase the regular CB, but don't want there to be a conflict with CBPro (prefs and all that...) and I really would rather save the money!

Thanks for your assistance…

I haven't done this, but doesn't Account > New Account... do exactly that? You would have to be sure the drawer on the right is opened, and in that drawer you can select All Accounts or just the one you want to see. When making entries, you would use Account > Switch To... to bring up the active account.

That's just my guess, though. YMMV.

Actually that's exactly what I don't want to do because then all my reporting using "All Accounts" would then include my work (charity) account. I need these to be separated for reporting and tax purposes. Adding a non-personal account to my other (personal) accounts wouldn't work.

You could do that using Smart Folders, no?

No. When I need to create reports for tax purposes, I use "All Accounts" for that purpose. There is no way to omit individual accounts from reports. I could create reports using each individual account and report from within those, but I'd have to do this for each of the four personal accounts I have. A rather onerous prospect, indeed. Smart folders will not change this scenario, at least not that I've been able to perceive. Plus it just makes good accounting sense not to combine personal and business accounts in the same package. Other software programs (Quicken, Money, iCompta, SeeFinance, etc.) allow the creation of separate files (databases). I really wish that CBPro allowed the same thing!

Thanks

the workaround might be to create and use the new account, and when you want to do the tax reports on the others, Backup Accounts... (save the plist file to the desktop) and then Remove the unwanted account. This should leave the other 4 accounts intact for the tax report. Then, when you are done, replace the Accounts.plist file in the user Application support file with the Accounts.plist file that you saved to the desktop. This will put CBPro back the way it was before you removed the church account. Just be sure to save that plist file before you start!

It may not be elegant, but it IS a workaround. Perhaps the CB team will chime in here. I'm just another user.

Thanks. A bit too much for me. I've got the account now on Quicken 2007, but just wanted to move it to CB and throw out Quicken. I'll wait and see if someone from Splasm sees this and weighs in!

Thanks again!

There are a couple approaches you could try. The cleanest way would be to create or use another Mac Os X user account to create a new set of separate accounts. If you use fast user switching and move between the two users, you can maintain 2 different sets of accounts without them bumping into each other. This may also be helpful if you have sets of bookmarks or documents you commonly use relating to your separate account. The separate user account is a very handy way of maintaining very different sets of work, accounts, email, bookmarks, and so on.

The other way that you could do this is to lock the account that you want to exclude from your reporting. If you edit the account and enter in the optional password, every time you launch CheckBook you will see a lock in its listing of accounts in the accounts drawer, and none of its data will be used in summaries or searches. It will also be excluded from the accounts total in the accounts drawer. If you unlock and edit the account, you can lock it again and have it excluded from totals without quitting CheckBook. This should effectively remove it from fouling your regular data during tax time or everyday use.

I hope this helps some!

_________________
Randy Knoble
Splasm Software
www.Splasm.com

Thanks, Randy!

I did set up the new user on my Mac and have set up the new account in CBPro in that and it is working fine. I had forgotten about locking accounts, so thanks for the reminder. I do lock CBPro, but not the individual accounts. But, for now, I'll just go with the other user account.

BTW- I've tried every other financial app out there for Mac (really, every last one!) and every time I open CBPro, I'm just very thankful for what you do. I spent several weeks determining the best fit for my needs and, hands down, DBPro is a winner. It is an elegant, solid, and tight app that is a joy to use. Quite simple in it's approach and use, but extremely robust in implementation. Keep up the good work!

And, thanks again…