I don’t know how similar or different the COA would need to be for each business but here is a link to using account numbers.

These are fully customizable and dependent on what you want, so I would figure out a way of using the numbers to separate things the way you want.

Maybe the first digit represents company A or B, and the second digit represents the account type.

For example, 11XXX- company 1 asset accts 12XXX- company 1 liability accts 23XXX- company 2 equity accts 24XXX - company 2 income accounts 15XXX - company 1 expense accounts.

This will separate the COA’s within qbo, since you can tell it to sort numerically.

The 1-5 meaning asset, liability, equity, income and expense is pretty common. You’d just add a number before that to represent company 1 or 2.

Maybe for both, but at least for the company that has personal mixed in, make sure you have an equity account called something like “Owner Pay and Personal Expenses.”

Do they often buy things for the company on their personal card? If so, I’d suggest doing a Loan from Member liability account (which should replace their Personal bank as the account being credited for these expenses). That way when they reimburse themselves for these expenses (if they are), it will be treated as paying down a liability, rather than taking an owner draw (which they will have to pay taxes on).

Hope this helps.