Hi
As far as I know, there is no problem with projects over a long time. You will have to assign projects to every line of all entries in order to keep accurate data. You will not be able to have standard Balance sheet, nor Income statement. All financial reports available are in Reports, Project. You will not be able to see Receivables nor payables by project. If this fits your needs, go on!

Bravo1: With Sage 50 CDN PRO edition why not just set up a set of books for each company. Proper financial record keeping requires a separate set of books for each company. The easiest way to do this would be to set up one company, possibly the most complex one, and when it is complete then "save a copy as" will give you a new set with a different company name. Make the necessary adjustments and then make another copy for the next company. This will get you the five sets of books with all of the proper reporting for each including the A/R and A/P. If all of them have the same fiscal year and ownership then your accountant would be able to consolidate them all into one for the total reporting at year end. This works well. I know of one client who has seven or eight small companies as well as a holding company where the consolidation is very easy each year.

Bravo1 said:

I have a company

One corporation = 1 set of books. 

Bravo1 said:

that is made up of 6 little businesses

If it's not incorporated as one company, and it's not a partnership with one name, and each business has its own, separate name, and there are separate bank accounts for each business, then you have a collection of separate businesses, and each one should have its own, separate, set of books.

I would caution you against having multiple sets of books where bank accounts are 'shared'.  It banks bank reconciliations un-unravelable.

Otherwise, you have multiple lines of business within one company, which Projects will be good at keeping track of.  

I hope that helps, please post back

Thanks for all your input, I am pretty sure that using projects for my little sideline businesses within my main business will give me all the financial information I need.