Sub Account vs Activities

It's been a while, but I believe one of the deciding factors was the ability to create budgets and reports across multiple fiscal years in activities.

Ed,

We utilize the activities module to reconcile to the general ledger. Our overall setup is; each project is an activity number and each activity number may only post to one general ledger account (the construction in process account). Once the activities module is exclusively being used and agrees to the general ledger, you can capitalize assets starting with the activities module screens. This process interfaces with asset management.

To Karen's point - we assign each activity number (project) a budget in order to track cost against what was approved to spent.

Hope this helps...

As to which option (sub-accounts for activities) is the "best option" for you, it depends on what you need.
If you need controls such as budget controls, reporting options, account controls, and date controls, then activities is the way to go for you. But, that will involve a lot of setup and maintenance. You'd have to setup the AC module, setup and maintain each activity, and close out AC.
But, if you are just wanting to track basic stuff like how many dollars spent for X activity, then using sub-accounts would be far easier. Setting up a subaccount is no different than setting up an account.