Confusion

[Cam Ellison]

On 25/08/15 03:17 PM, James Fuller wrote:
> Hi Cam,
> They are both income accounts.  On a transfer it seems to me that one should increase and one should decrease, which they do.  Problem is that they are reversing.  When I transfer aaa to bbb
> It is intuitive to think that aaa would would decrease and bbb would increase.  Just the opposite happens.
>
>
I may not understand what you are trying to do, or how you have things 
set up.

In your original example, you were depositing $100 into the bank, of 
which $50 was ticket sales and $50 was entry fees.  Your bank account 
should increase by $100 and your two income accounts should increase by 
$50 each.  When you do an entry with a split, the simplest approach is 
to allow splits to display (I use the Transaction Journal option - in 
the View dropdown) and after putting $100 into the bank (you should be 
working from that account) enter one of the Income accounts into the 
account field in the second line and change the $100 to $50. That forces 
creation of a third line, into which of course you put the other Income 
account.  Both those entries will be in the opposite column to the one 
with the bank deposit in it.  (As a general principle, you will have 
only one entry in one column and all the rest in the other.)  It would 
look something like this (your terminology is in parentheses):

Deposit                  |Assets:Bank    |  100.00|            | (aaa)
                                 |Income:Tickets|              | 
50.00|   (bbb=aaa/2)
                                 |Income:Fees    |              | 
50.00|  (bbb=aaa/2)

Set up like that all three of them cannot do other than increase. IANAA 
- this is just how I understand it: Income has the opposite sign to 
Assets so a debit to Assets:Bank (I think of putting money into the Bank 
as taking it out of my hands or some other source rather than crediting 
the Bank) is a credit to Income:Tickets and Income:Fees: they get credit 
for providing the money you put into the Bank.   Thus, in a sense, the 
Income accounts go down, but they go down by a negative amount, not a 
positive one.  Thus, continuing that approach, aaa = -bbb, because bbb 
has the opposite sign. Someone please correct me if I'm spouting garbage 
here.

Cheers

Cam

PS I'm replying to the list so everyone can see this.  It will help if 
your replies are made to the list, not me personally.