[GNC] Don't understand why I have what I have

[David Cousens]

Todd,

When you edit a register and change a debit entry to a credit entry for
example in the first line, the original transaction will have had an equal
credit entry corresponding to the original debit entry. After you edit the
first line younow have two credit entries for the transaction and no
corresponding debit entry until you change the second line. GnuCash
automatically balances the transaction so it creates a default debit entry
to the Imbalance account. If you continue and then edit the original credit
entry in the second line to make it a debit, the automatically calculated
correcting entry to the Imbalance account should change to zero again and
when you hit enter after correcting the second line.

This behavior is all described in the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts guide
and Help manual. You would really save yourself a lot of confusion if you
worked through some of the examples on how the registers function.

Chapter 6 of the Help manual
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-help/ch_Common_Trans_Ops.html
describes what is happening and why.

Whether to debit or credit an account in a transaction in an accounting
program may also not be what you expect from the everday experience with
bank statements etc. 

The actual behavior of debits and credits on each type of account is
summarized below for each basic account type.

Asset accounts: Debits increase the account balance - credits decrease the
account balance;
Liability Accounts: Debits decrease the account balance  - credits increase
the account balance;
Equity Accounts: Debits decrease the account balance - credits increase the
account balance;
Income accounts: Debits decrease the account balance - credits increase the
account balance;
Expense accounts:Debits increase the account balance - credits decrease the
account balance;

this works like this because sum of the balances in the accounts of each
account type in double entry satisfy the followingrelationship:

Sum of Assets= Sum of of Liabilities + Sum of Equity +Sum of Income - Sum of
Expenses
and the requirement for each transaction that the Sum of the debit entries
equals the sum of the credit entries.

GnuCash strictly implements and enforces these requirements on accounts and
transactions which is why you get the apparently inexplicable behavior.

David Cousens



David Cousens



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David Cousens
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