Penny[1] is a project that aims to build a command-line accounting system with the traditional idea of debits and credits. It seems like it hasn't had any activity in awhile but I thought was a neat idea last I looked.
[1]: https://github.com/massysett/penny On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Martin Blais <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes. > What's happening is that we're essentially using the correct internal > representation of the software externally. > > Note that if the accounts are coerced to be in one of the five types (or > otherwise have some such attribute to classify them), there's a trivial way > to convert inputs and outputs to conform to the traditional debits/credits > representation. > > > > On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 6:30 AM, Mark Alexander <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Excerpts from Rick F's message of 2015-03-16 02:07:33 -0400: >> > So along comes Ledger, written by a computer scientist, not an >> > accountant. Computer scientists don't have anything against >> > subtraction since it's really just 2's complement addition, and they >> > hate added complexity, so they do away with credits and debits >> > entirely by just moving everything to one side of the equation. >> > Debits+-Debits=0. >> >> This is the reason why I find Ledger's model much simpler than the >> classic double entry accounting model. When I look at descriptions of >> the latter, e.g., the article on Wikipedia, I get terribly confused >> about which types of accounts get bigger or smaller when you credit or >> debit them. I finally realized that my confusion about the seemingly >> unnecessary complication stems from accountants' hatred of negative >> numbers. >> >> But I find negative numbers so much easier to understand. All I have >> to know about ledger is that in a transaction, money added to an >> account (or accounts) has to be subtracted from another account (or >> accounts). Then, for example, I can treat credit cards and checking >> accounts the same way: when I take money from them, their balances are >> reduced. The difference is that a credit card starts with a zero >> balance and goes negative when I take money from it; the checking >> account starts with a positive balance, and (if I'm doing things >> frugally) stays positive (though reduced) when I take money from it. >> >> Accountants would probably hate this model of things, but it works for me. >> >> -- >> >> --- >> 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]. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > > --- > 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]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- --- 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]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
