> On Mar 5, 2023, at 7:03 AM, Michael or Penny Novack
> <stepbystepf...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> On 3/4/2023 1:26 PM, 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.
>
> Are we confusing you?
>
> Let's go back to the beginning (and that is where the mistake was)
>
> What are you saying when you say "the credit card balance is negative"? What
> are you saying when you say "I owe you ten dollars" vs "I owe you NEGATIVE
> ten dollars".
>
> The credit card account is a liability. If it INCREASES it means you owe
> more. If it decreases it means you owe less. So the transactions are doing
> the right thing. Your problem was with the initial balance. IF you started
> out owing NEGATIVE five hundred dollars and you made a payment of two hundred
> dollars the balance should be negative seven hundred dollars. In other words,
> your transactions were doing the right thing but your initial balance was on
> the wrong side of the ledger.
>
> OK, you are where you are, how to correct your books. You apparently started
> your books with an amount for the credit card account of some negative amount
> X. So now you need to enter a correction transaction in the amount of 2X. The
> debit side would be starting equity and the credit side your credit card
> account. You are reducing your equity by 2X because you initially overstated
> it by X and you did owe X.
Michael,
Careful: The representation of the balance in the register depends on
Preferences>Accounts>Reversed Balance Accounts. What you say is correct if the
default Credit Accounts is selected, but if either of the others is selected
then a credit card (or any other liability and equity) register will show a
negative balance when used in the normal way.
Custom Shots,
Please tell us what you have set for that preference.
Regards,
John Ralls
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