On 2023-03-04 10:26, Custom Shots wrote: > I just noticed this. Something has changed. I keep 30 day backups and this > has been going on in all my backups. When I add a payment transaction to my > credit card account the negative balance increases instead of decreasing. > Any clues to what is happening? I am using GnuCash Version: 4.8 Build ID: > 4.8a+(2021-09-28) on Ubuntu 2022.04.2. The second half of the double entry > transaction, the withdrawal from my checking account, works correctly.
Presumably by "correctly" you mean that the positive balance of the cash or checking account goes down? If so, I agree with you that it's correct: a credit to an asset account reduces the balance of that account. (Paying someone is a credit to cash, and getting money from someone is a debit to cash.) To balance that credit, the other side of the transaction, the part applied to your credit-card account, must be a debit. The credit-card account is a liability, so a debit reduces its balance. If the balance is already negative, then a debit will make it more negative. You might take a look in Edit » Preferences » Accounts, under "Reverse Balanced Accounts". I can't remember the details from when I set up my data file a few years ago, but I do remember that on experimenting with those settings the only one that _didn't_ give nonsensical results was "Credit accounts". (I mean nonsensical to me; I'm sure the developers must have had some good reason for those other settings.) So you might experiment with that setting. (You might also consider ticking the box to use "formal accounting labels". Some people like the informal ones, some don't. The formal labels require you to know what a debit and a credit are, but that's easily learned and then at least one layer of obscurity is removed when diagnosing unexpected behavior.) But I'm trying to work out what you're reporting, and I don't understand it. You say the credit-card account was negative before you made the payment, and then it "increased". That doesn't seem right -- normally a credit-card account would be positive, being your liability, the amount you owe. (But the "Reverse Balanced Accounts" setting I mentioned above could change that.) Are you saying something like: the balance on your Visa account was minus $200, and you paid $65, and now the balance is minus $265 instead of the expected minus $135? That would be wrong under any circumstances, as far as I can understand. Or did you mean it literally that the account balance "increases", since minus $135 is greater than minus $200? If that's what you meant, then everything is correct except that the credit-card account is showing a minus sign in front of correct balances, and for that I'd definitely have a look at "Reverse Balanced Accounts". Stan Brown Tehachapi, CA, USA https://BrownMath.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 ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
