On 2018-03-10 22:48, am wrote: > I just finished setting up gnuCASH and found that after entering > income (and other date ie expenses, etc) it shows up as negative(in > parenthesis). This would mean a negative income? Why would it not > show as expected - POSITIVE income since there was no loss. Is this > how accounting works? What am I missing? Accounting as you learned it sounds like I learned it: Debits = Credits (or Debits - Credits = 0) Assets + Expenses = Liabilities + Equities + Income Most transactions increase the values of the accounts. For example, if you buy something for $100 on credit, both Assets and Liabilities increase by $100.
But GnuCash, instead of having a balance like that, instead sets up Debits + Credits = 0 Assets + Expenses + Liabilities + Equities + Income = 0 If you buy something on credit, Assets increase by $100 and Liabilities decrease by $100 -- i.e, Liabilities become more negative, and -400 is less than -300. You can make this go away, mostly, in Edit » Preferences » Accounts. Under "Reverse Balance Accounts", select "credit accounts". You'll get used to this after a while. Unfortunately, some reports don't honor this preference, or their treatment of it is buggy, so they will show credit accounts as negative after you make this change. Income Statement and Balance Sheet reports get it right; the General Ledger report (as opposed to the General Ledger tool) puts the wrong sign on totals. -- Regards, Stan Brown Tompkins County, New York, USA http://BrownMath.com http://OakRoadSystems.com _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
