On Sun, Sep 25, 2022 at 9:17 AM Pranesh Prakash <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 > Thx Pranesh, I'm still not 100% sure what you'd like me to change. You'd like for this text to be inserted in the doc? I can give you suggestion rights, just request it through the UI. Even after all these years I still find these words inconvenient; why is a "debit card" called a debit card, when its purpose is to take money out? And what about the sentence "we'll credit it to your account"? One can always make sense of these by flipping the perspective between the recipient vs. sender. (e.g. debiting to one's cash account). And it's more than just the sign convention we choose: I find I have to have the context to be able to make sense of the words right. So I prefer not to use them. As for pta, thanks for pointing it out, I wasn't aware of it. At first I look at the convention and I'm thinking "that's a weird choice" but I suppose it's arbitrary and I have to admit that Ledger and Beancount's choice is also probably looking similarly strange from an accountant's POV. My own surprise at the reverse convention leads me to think maybe I should implement the option to have all positive numbers and flipping the signs automatically on reading. I proposed a while ago we should be able to flip on input and output (but the output part's more complicated, because it would have to be applied on the result of doing all the calculations so it's more a reporting feature). I wonder how many people would find that useful. It's pretty easy to add. > > 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 > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/2ac8bf44-399f-44d5-9382-ac5d48b6b7ean%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- 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/CAK21%2BhNCyqPUzPy%3D6%2BkPg1ma8k%2B9g3hMwv2q2otRLh6ucTj-7w%40mail.gmail.com.
