Equity vs liability

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>
>Here's the thing:
>In Belgium (and perhaps in other countries as well) a balance is usually 
>represented like this:
>Assets | Liabilities
>-------+------------
>...    | Equity
>.      | Other liabilities
>.      | ...
>
>(In Dutch this would be:
>Activa | Passiva
>-------+----------
>...    | Eigen vermogen
>.      | Vreemd vermogen (leningen ed)
>.      | ...
>
>  
>
I suspect that this is a "language thing". In order to be able to use 
only the operation of addition traditional double entry bookkeeping 
expresses the fundamental equation as Assets = Liabilities + Equity. To 
take the Dutch example, it appears as "Acitva" is being used for "left 
side of equation" and "Passiva" for "right side of this equation" -- or 
to use the very old terminology, "debits" vs "credits" (accounts whose 
balances are normally on the left side of the ledger vs accounts whose 
balances are normally on the right side of the ledger).

In other words, the problem is in Belgium the word used for 
"liabilities" ISN'T an equivalent of the English (the English term 
"liabilities" would be the equivalent of Belgian "other liabilities".

If you (in Belgium or the Netherlands) structure your books just like we 
do the reports will be OK after you perhaps edit some titles. In other 
words, the balance sheet WILL first add up all the Assets and then 
opposing this the Liabilities and Equity. You would then edit the title 
"Liabilities" to "Other Liabilities" and the title "Total Liabilities & 
Equity" to "Liabilities" while in the Netherlands the editing would be 
"Assets" to "Acitva", "Equity" to "Eigen vermogen", "Liabilities" to 
"Vreemd vermogen", and "Total Liabilities & Equity" to "Passiva".

And yes of course, perhaps something the developers could tackle for the 
"Belgian edition" and the "Dutch edition". But in the meantime you can 
still deliver the reports. Not without editing BUT we shouldn't expect 
the raw reports of any accounting package to be the final form which we 
present to our boards of directors, governmental agencies, etc. In other 
words, I don't consider "some editing needed" a failing of GnuCash.

Michael