On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:20 PM, Rick F <[email protected]> wrote: > No need to enforce anything. Users could just declare accounts to be > either debit or credit. Something like: > debit account Assets:Bank:Checking > or > account Assets:Bank:Checking > debit >
That's how Beancount used to be. The first version had a syntax to declare it. I got rid of this in the name of simplicity. (Now it could be metadata on the Open directive.) > > Accounts which are not explicitly declared will simply inherit their > status from the parent account. The (implied) root account would be a > debit account. > > Handling of existing files would not be changed but if someone wanted > traditional accounting they could just add to the beginning of their ledger > file: > credit account Liabilities > credit account Equity > credit account Income > > For credit accounts, amounts would have their signs reversed on input and > on output. You could even go so far as to add a credit/debit option to > reports to output amounts in two columns, debit and credit, instead of one > column with signs. For the register report, every negative amount in the > ledger file would get output in the column opposite the account type, > credits for debit accounts and debits for credit accounts. You could even > add totals to the bottom of the credit/debit columns so the user can verify > debits=credits. > > Rick > > On Thursday, March 19, 2015 at 11:34:55 AM UTC-7, Martin Blais wrote: >> >> 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. > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. 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