Income increase is shown as unbalanced, what to do?

[David Carlson]

On 10/2/2013 9:58 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Lake <lake100 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
>>> I do not understand your problem.  Income does not add up to zero.  If
>>> you were talking about salary, you would see it increasing with each
>>> paycheck. 
>>  I'm trying to enter eBay sales in GnuCash, not salary.
> Okay, so you open your Assets:Banks:EBay account and create a
> transaction (assuming you're in Basic Mode):
>
>   Date   Description  Transfer      Desposit   Withdrawal
>   <date> <Buyer Name> Income:Sales  <txn amt>
>
>>> ...does not add up to zero.
>> Now I don't understand what does it mean :) 
>> What zero? The problem was with income (sales) in red.
> What it means is that in any single transaction the sum of the debits ==
> the sum of the credits.  Gnucash enforces this invariant.  I.e., if you
> Deposit money into a Bank Account it has to come *from* somewhere
> (e.g. Income:Sales).  So you debit your bank and credit income.  This
> will "increase" both the bank and income.
>
>>>  You will see red in the income account depending on how you have your
>>> preferences set under
>>> Edit>Preferences>Accounts>Reverse Balanced Accounts. 
>> This solved my problem completely, now income is in black and expenses are
>> in red.
> Um, this does NOT sound like it's correct..  Nothing should be in "Red"
Sure.  Under Preferences>General>Numbers  there is a check-box to
Display negative amounts in red.  My black-and-white printer is glad
that there are also parentheses around negative numbers. :)  

My original confusion revolved around the definition of the word
unbalanced in the thread title.  I thought it meant 'Income does not add
up to zero' and that the OP was more concerned about that than the color
of the ink.  Reminds me of the bookkeeper who was so glad when the
business finally went into the black that he went out and bought some
black ink.  Then they were back in the red.  :)

(snip)

David C