Don't understand imbalance

[Maf. King]

On Friday 21 November 2008 20:05:14 Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Harold wrote:
> > Description                Account               Deposit         
> > Withdrawal credit
> > card                                                                     
> >   366.90 health ins                        292.40
> > books                                 12.00 medical
> > costs                    62.50 bank
> > account                                             366.90
> >
> > Which 366.90 is the one not needed? Hope this comes thru sort of in the
> > columns as I intended.
>
> all of those lines should be there.
> (ignoring the other comments on how your books are organised)
> so this is not the 'imbalance problem'
> i would delete and try again.

Not withstanding all the other comments about credit card accounts, with which 
I agree, I can see why the txn is unbalanced.   The credit card should start 
at zero, and end at zero.  therefore, you are actually combining the 
following txns into one:

CCard	Exps:health ins     +292.40
CCard	Exps:books	    +12.00
CCard	Exps:medical	   +62.50

and:

CCard	Bank	-366.90

In effect you either need another "CCard" split in your txn to deal with the 
funds coming from the bank (equal and opposite to the one already there) or 
you set the existing split to 0.00, (just to tie the txn to the CCard 
account.)

I haven't explained myself very clearly, but it is hard to get over the fact 
that what you are doing is, well not wrong as such, but so obtuse to 
GAAP/double entry that I only feel like I have a slender grasp of the 
problem...

HTH,
Maf.
  





-- 
Maf. King
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