[GNC] [Bug 798864] Budget Revalues for the Income are positive numbers.porting on select reports are wrong

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 4/17/2023 4:01 AM, Richard Lindgren wrote:
> Sounds like you understand my problem. However, since I'm not a programmer, I hesitate to tackle this patch. Maybe it is easier than it looks and is probably the best fix? I'm just nervous here.
>
> Let me ask this basic question. When I am creating my Budget, I have assumed this:
>          1. All Income values are positive numbers.
>          2. All Expense values are negative numbers.
>
> With that being said and used, my reports work for; a) Profit and Loss Report and b) my Budget Report.
>
> Now the question is, where do I go from here?

For me to be able to help you, you would need to stop thinking of 
positive and negative that way.

Double entry bookkeeping is older than the use of negative numbers in 
European mathematics. To ME, in the context of bookkeeping, positive 
means a balance in the sense expected for an account of that type and 
negative if in the sense opposite to what is expected for that sort of 
account. With the two senses being "debit" and "credit". (as opposed to 
positive and negative). Which is normal depends on the type of the 
account (or as we would say in the old days, on which side of the ledger 
-- picture an open book; there is a left hand page and a right hand page).

So ..... I would consider a income amount negative were it a debit and 
an expense amount negative were it a credit (say a rebate). That's  
because normal for account type income is credit and normal for account 
type expense is debit. Notice it is different say for the bank account 
involved as the other side of these transactions, but that is because 
its type is "asset".

When reporting a bug, I would suggest FIRST seeing if this bug manifests 
while using just the formal accounting senses debit and credit. If not, 
but you perceive the problem when using positive and negative, give 
serious consideration that the problem is not with the program but 
misunderstanding how positive and negative apply in this situation.

Michael D Novack