reverse balance accounts

[Dave Peticolas]

 writes:
> On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 09:32:12PM -0700, Dave Peticolas wrote:
> > I think this is a good idea, both the per-account reverse setting
> > and requiring the hierarchy to be consistent.
> 
> I don't think I agree; allowing per-account preferences for balance
> sign-display seems like a recipe for confusion.  What is the problem
> that it's solving?  If there are a class of accounts that people want
> to see with the opposite sign, I think that should be discussed, but
> it seems to me that if an account has the "wrong" sign it's probably
> symptomatic of a systematic problem in the way one is using the
> program (i.e. putting negative numbers for check amounts).

As a matter of fact, there is a class of accounts that people
want to see with an opposite sign. They are called 'contra-accounts'.
For example, a 'contra-asset' account can be used to record the
depreciation of an asset. Since depreciation will represent a
credit balance, a 'contra-asset' is a 'credit' account.

I suppose instead of having a flag, we could just add all the
contra-accounts to the account classes.

dave