The sort of accounts you are describing are more correctly a sub-category 
of "bank" or "equity" account which can have a positive or negative balance.

By definition, an asset account CAN'T have a negative balance. An exception 
may exist for a sub-category of an asset account but only for adjustment 
purposes. The parent account overall still can't have a negative balance. 
Ditto for Liability accounts and positive balances.

If your business has a client who is both a supplier and a purchaser and 
you both operate on account (not cash only) then you will be writing 
entries in bot the accounts section and the liability section.

For example, if you purchase a widget from your client (who's name is 
Johnny Smith) you might make the following entry:
2019/10/07 * Smith, Johnny
   Assets:Widget                     $ 1000.00
   Liabilities:Accounts Payable     $ -1000.00

If you sell a service to the client then the entry would be:
2019/10/07 * Smith, Johnny
   Income:Service                    $ -500.00
   Assets:Accounts Receivable         $ 500.00

When it comes time to settle with this client, the net payment would take 
into account both the asset and liability accounts:
2019/10/07 * Smith, Johnny
   Liabilities:Accounts Payable      $ 1000.00
   Assets:Accounts Receivable        $ -500.00
   Bank:Checking Account             $ -500.00

On Monday, October 7, 2019 at 4:20:32 AM UTC+8, Remco Rijnders wrote:
>
> Hi, 
>
> Does anyone know if there is any way to suppress "asset" accounts with a 
> negative balance (for example, an overdrawn current account) from showing 
> up in a balance under the normal assets category, and instead have it show 
> up as a liability in that case only? I know ledger-cli doesn't care, but 
> the government processing my tax return does. I know that I can do this 
> adjustment manually myself, but that sort of defeats the purpose of trying 
> to automate this. I have tried various things with the print command, 
> --limit filter, etc. but haven't found a satisfactory solution yet. If 
> there is no simple solution, I am happy to pipe my data through some 
> script to get to the desired results. 
>
> Any ideas? 
>
> Many thanks in advance! 
>
> Kind regards, 
>
> Remco Rijnders 
>

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Ledger" 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/ledger-cli/0898bbee-fee3-49df-9053-f2c62253d9dd%40googlegroups.com.

Reply via email to