[GNC] credit account negative balance increases with payment

[Michael or Penny Novack]

> I would take Stan's advice and change, at least temporarily, to the formal
> accounting labels. The logic implemented in GnuCash to keep to the accounting
> formalism is most clearly expressed in that format.

Yes --- those new to double entry bookkeeping can be easily confused by 
the supposedly user friendly column titles. Gnucash is showing ledger 
accounts in three column format (pretty much a 20th Century change form 
the older two column format with no running balance kept. The three 
columns are debit, credit, and running balance.

> A purchase made via  a Credit card account (a liability)  will have a an entry
> with a split crediting that account with the other split a debit entry to an

You can confuse folks new to double entry bookkeeping when you use a 
term like "split" that way. All transactions have AT LEAST two accounts 
affected, a debit and a credit. Reserve "split" for when there are more 
than two so either the debit side, the credit side, or both are split 
into more than one account on that side of the transaction.

OK, back to the original problem. The transaction represented by a 
payment on a credit card would be a debit to the credit card account and 
a credit to the account from which the payment was made. That would 
USUALLY be a checking account, but notice that I am not assuming that << 
the transaction MIGHT be a "balance transfer" between two credit cards >>

I strongly suggest you choose options like "show as negative" only once 
you are experienced with double entry bookkeeping. Double entry 
bookkeeping evolved before European math accepted negative numbers. The 
"senses" are debit and credit (not positive and negative) and that's not 
the same. Instead, the different fundamental account types have either a 
debit or credit natural balance. If an account whose natural balance is 
debit has a credit balance that's like a negative but note that the 
reverse is true. For an account whose natural balance is credit, a debit 
balance would be like negative. In other words, can;t associate debit 
with plus and credit with minus.

Michael D Novack