Dear Martin,
I tried to make the proposed correction on the Google doc, but didn't have permissions to either suggest edits nor to leave comments. So I thought I'd bring it up here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/100tGcA4blh6KSXPRGCZpUlyxaRUwFHEvnz_k9DyZFn4/edit# In this doc on double-entry you write: > In contrast, accountants traditionally keep all the balances of their accounts as positive numbers and then handle postings to those accounts differently depending on the account type upon which they are applied. The sign to apply to each account is entirely dictated by its type: Assets and Expenses accounts are debit accounts and Liabilities, Equity and Income accounts are credit accounts and require a sign adjustment. Moreover, posting a positive amount on an account is called “crediting” and removing from an account is called “debiting.” See this external document <http://www.accountingtools.com/debits-and-credits>, for example, which nearly makes my head explode. This way of handling postings makes everything much more complicated than it needs to be. Under beancount's sign convention (where Assets and Expenses are normally positive numbers and Liabilities, Equity, and Income are normally negative numbers), adding a positive number would be "debiting" and subtracting a number would be "crediting". So, in this example, the Assets account is debited and the Equity account is credited: ``` 2014-01-02 * "Deposit" Assets:Checking 100.00 USD Equity:Opening -100.00 USD ``` This is true in all circumstances where the sign convention AE = +ve and XLR = -ve is followed. All "to" postings are "debits" / positive, and all "from" postings are "credits" / negative. Of course, if the reverse convention is followed (where AE = -ve and XLR = +ve), then "crediting" would be adding a (positive) amount and "debiting" would be subtracting an amount (or adding a negative amount). I know of one software (pta(1)), which follows this reverse convention: https://mandoc.bsd.lv/pta/man/pta-glossary.7.html Regards, Pranesh -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/2ac8bf44-399f-44d5-9382-ac5d48b6b7ean%40googlegroups.com.
