There's no real need to rewrite the software; it should be a very easy change to the Ledger or Beancount parsers to flip the signs on input (well in Ledger you'd have to define well-known categories; Beancount enforces all accounts have to be in one of the 5 already), and for output the reverse could be done. In principle this is doable and this is also a small, isolated change (on rearchitecture required or anything like that).
On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Peter Keen <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. > -- --- 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.
