[GNC] Recommended Method of Entry for IRA Distributions

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 1/12/2023 12:41 PM, R Losey wrote:
> Thanks; I know the information is out there, but intuitively, it doesn't
> make sense to me that depositing funds to my bank account is a "debit"
> transaction to the bank. It comes from the concept of credit being "added
> to" and debit being "substracted from", I suppose.
>
> Is the "Debit on the left" and "Credit on the right" true in general
> accounting, or just GnuCash?

a) Double entry bookkeeping goes back a long way, long enough that Latin 
still in use for communications among the educated in Europe. Think of 
"debit" and "credit" not in terms of plus and minus (before European 
math had negative numbers) but as "he owes"(me) and "he trusts" (me). In 
other words  he owes me that amount and he trusts me for that amount (I 
owe him)

    Now look again at the bank account.In YOUR books a debit (the bank 
owes you this money) and in the bank's book a credit (the bank owes you 
this money)

b) Debit on the left and credit on the right. In the old days ledger 
pages had two sides, one side for the debits and the other for the 
credits (and no balance column). Perhaps within my lifetime it became 
more common to use three column paper with debit and credit transactions 
with one date, check number, description, and journal reference column 
then a left for debit, a right (middle) for credit, and a balance. o a 
running balance was kept << finding the balance was a process in the old 
days before that >>

NOTICE -- so far pen and ink on paper, and gnucash is simply modelling that

Michael D Novack