[GNC] Need help with a Savings account

Michael or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at comcast.net
Tue Apr 16 08:41:24 EDT 2019


On 4/15/2019 6:11 PM, ToddAndMargo via gnucash-user wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Now that I am feeling brave coming off of creating a charge
> card account, I decided to create a saving account.
>
> My bank statement shows deposits as positive numbers and
> withdrawals as negative numbers, so I decided to follow suite
>
> Okay, I set the initial test balance to +100.  It shows in
> balance as 100.  All is well so far.
>
> Then I put 10 in the debit column of the account, meaning I
> withdrew 10 from the account. 

STOP ---- ask yourself, are you trying to keep books from the point of 
view of yourself of from the point of view of the bank?
What is a positive for the bank is a negative for you and vice versa.

Increases to the account FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW are debits. Decreases 
are credits. That is because the type of account FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW 
is an asset. From the bank's point of view, it is a liability (they owe 
you the money in your account) so this is reversed.

We cannot tell if you were right about that "all is well so far" unless 
you tell us whether that was a $100 debit balance of a $100 credit balance.

Michael D Novack


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