Shared Account with Gift Card credits

Question

We have four people in our family, each with their own USER account on a shared Mac Mini computer. Each user account has it's own iTunes LIBRARY and associated iPod. However, all of the individual iTunes libraries are set-up to use a single iTunes STORE account so that all of the billing goes through a single credit card and it allows us to share songs with each other.
Now we are giving the kids iTunes gift cards for things such as Christmas and making honor roll. However, when they redeem their cards using their user account and their library, it appears that the STORE lumps all of the cards together so that it is no longer clear which child has which value remaining and it also shows up on our "adult" accounts where we don't want to use their card values at all.
So ... Is there any way to associate a redeemed card with just one user?
Also, now with the new iTunes family share version, is it possible instead to create a separate STORE account for each person, but use the same billing info for each and then be able to share our libraries even though we would no longer share the same Store account?

Answer 1

I can go and create a separate store account for each of us and each of the kids and bill it all to one credit card. Then they can each have and track their own redeemed card amounts on their individual store accounts. RIght?
Correct.
1) Will we still be able to apply parental rules to what they can access / download now that they will have a separate store account?
Yes. The Parental Controls apply regardless of what iTunes Store account the instance of iTunes happens to be logged into. Otherwise it would be too easy to defeat just by the user logging into another iTunes Store account.
2) Will we still be able to select the option which will require them to get our approval (password) before they can download something new?
It would work just like it does now. If you don't give them the password to their own iTunes Store account, they can't buy anything, but if they know the password, you can't stop them other than by using the Parental Controls to lock off the iTunes Store.
3) When songs are downloaded now, they go into their respective library for the user doing the downloading. Then if we want to share it with each other we just access that library on the hard drive and import it into the new library. Pretty easy. But ... I thought that originally when I tried to do this, it wouldn't allow it because of whatever the coding is on the file that showed it was coming from a "different" account and so that was one of the reasons I put everyone on a single account if (I remember correctly).
If an item is copy-protected, the computer must be authorized to that iTunes Store account. But that authorization should apply across all user accounts on a single computer and should happen automatically when the iTunes Store account is set up for the first item is purchased through the account. Almost all music on the iTunes Store now comes without copy protection, though, so the issue probably won't arise very often unless your kids are downloading videos, TV shows or movies.
Regards.