Two Companies, One Quickbooks?

You can do the books for both companies quite adequately on QuickBooks Pro.

Okay it turns out I'm fiddling with QB 2005 Basic for Small Business. I was just beginning to set things up and there seemed to be two options for dealing with managing two companies. One is to create separate data files for each company. But I'm wondering if I would have the ability to share data (e.g. subcontractor, vendor, etc.) data between the two. That is if I had subcontractors that did work for both companies would I have to enter them twice (once into each data file)?

The other option seemed to be to use only one data file but treat each business as a separate department using classes. Though I'm wondering if I would have issues especially at tax time with generating appropriate 1099s with appropriate EINs, etc. Or could I use the classes to generate the appropriate 1099s, etc?

Last question, would updating to a newer more robust version of QB present me with improved options for what I want to do? Thanks a lot!

Do the two companies have separate EINs? If so, you must use two separate data files. I would suggest this anyhow and just import the names you need from the first data file.

I did this when we started a roofing company separate from the building and it was quick and easy.

Thank you!!

I suppose you didn't care about producing a consolidated income statement and balance sheet for both entities...?