Deposits as Liabilities or other?

[Wouter van Marle]

On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 15:32 +0100, Ian S. Worthington wrote:
> Many thanks Wouter.  This is *so* close to what I had I couldn't understand
> what the difference was for a while!
> 
> You're transferring only $38 from Income and $2 *from* Liabilities to give me
> the $40 I have in cash.  That makes sense (I was trying to transfer $2 *to*
> liabilities).

Correct.
Now the from and to are a bit weird in this way; you add to cash and add
to income that is. But if you define the accounts correctly, then that's
transparent (in the income, the columns are named Charge and Income,
while for Cash it's Receive and Spend). This as the sign inverts now and
then. Same for the Liabilities. Makes it look strange now and then: a
liability is basically a negative asset.
Actually after setting up the account types correctly I've barely ever
worried about in which column to put the amount; just do it in the
column that makes sense for the account where you work in, and the rest
follows. The only times I got a little confused was when inserting
splits.

> Looking better, I think: still trying to get my head around this stuff: my
> wife's 9 year old sister knows more about accountancy than I do -- would you
> believe its a compulsory subject in their school?

At that age already? Wow! I didn't have it in secondary school (was
optional; I took macro economics instead). A few months ago I got so fed
up with the mess that was called "financial administration" that I went
to the library and got a 100-odd page book "basics in accounting" or so.
>From that I got a whole lot of understanding, so I can really recommend
you to do so too. And when your finances get too complex for you to
handle after reading such an introduction book, it'll be time for an
accountant anyway.

> Off topic:  I've been using dual-boot, or even multi-boot since the days of
> OS/2 (remember that).  

I remember it very well; used that myself exclusively for years.

> I'm never totally happy with it and since almost everything I use is
> Windows I won't be changing anytime soon.

The most interesting part of your situation is that you're keeping Linux
as secondary O/S for that one favourite application. For most people
that do so it's the other way around: Linux (or BSD or ...) as main, and
Windows for those applications that do not have an alternative.

Wouter.