On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 00:00 +0000, Mark Brown wrote: > One of the things I'm doing that produces a result I don't expect is > that the amount removed from an asset account is being presented as a > "credit" so I don't think that's what's going on here, at least not > entirely.
See, this is where the precision is crucial. Moving money from an asset account to some other account is a credit on the asset account and a debit on the other account. So I don't know what you mean saying that "it" is presented as a credit; what is? The transaction is neither a credit nor a debit; it's composed of a matching credit on one account and debit on another account. For asset accounts, a positive balance (indicating you have an asset) is a debit. You may be used to banks, which report things to you as they appear on the *bank's* books. The bank thinks of your checking account as a *liability*, and when you have money in your account, the bank records that as more money which they owe you. Thus, when there is more money in your bank account, the bank calls that a "credit", and this leads you to think that "more money in an asset = credit". Actually it's the opposite! Your records of your bank account are, actually, the exact *opposite* of the bank's records; it's not one account, it's two: an asset account on your books, and a liability account on their books, and what they enter as a credit, you enter as a debit, because you have an opposite perspective on the money. For you, the account is an asset; for them, it's a liability. Thomas
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