Translation error: Passive := Equity + Liability missing in english accounting; was: Equity vs liability

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>>    
>>
>Nitpick - that's not what the OP meant.
>
>"traditional" is not an adjective describing US/English book-keeping,
>rather "traditional US/English" is an adjectival phrase describing
>book-keeping.
>
>In other words, in English, the OP meant "the traditional way of keeping
>books in Britain and America".
>
>Cheers,
>Wol
>  
>
Sort of, not quite. Double entry bookkeeping is older than doing it in 
English. Started out just "debit" and "credit" (from the Latin for "he 
owes" and "he trusts") in the period when in Europe Latin was still used 
as a universal language of the academic elite. These were assigned to 
the left hand and right hand sides of the ledger respectively. At this 
level we can think of two sorts of accounts, those for which if the 
account balance is postive will be on the debit side and those for whom 
if the account balance is positive will be on the credit side.

English uses "Assets" for the parent on the debit side, the implicit* 
"Equity plus Liabilities" as the parent on the credit side, with under 
it the two children "Equity" and "Liabilities".

* An implementation issue ---- perhaps the developers thinking of just 
the needs of the Eng;lish uses did not provide for an actual parent here 
but just has it display in the balance sheet as if it were there. If so, 
changing that to an actual account would make the process of 
"transaltion" a bit easier for the Belgians and Dutch (and perhaps 
others). Do NOT blame the developers for not looking ahead --- in my 
professiona; experience being able to visualize "how to design for 
greater uniformity/flexibility" is rare, found only among the very best 
analysts. Extremely hard to teach as they do it "on automatic".  In 
other words, in choosing among alternatives "how to do it" will almost 
always choose that which is most general, easiest to modify and 
maintain, easiest to test, etc. without barely a conscious thought. If 
you immediately stop them and ask "why are you doing it THAT way?" they 
can explain but not if not being asked.

Michael