4 ms·
BTW, why is "running the balance" a discrete operation to accountants? Because accountants' source of truth is the transaction log, which they call a "ledger".
by juped 6y ago
BTW, why is "running the balance" a discrete operation to accountants? Because accountants' source of truth is the transaction log, which they call a "ledger".
Ledger entries look (conceptually, not literally) like this:
|tx id| account | debit|credit|
| 123|Cash (bank 1) | 25| 0|
| 123|Cash (bank 2) | 25| 0|
| 123|Accounts Receivable| 0| 50|
with the constraint that a transaction is not valid unless the sum of debits equals the sum of credits (and, no, you can't have both nonzero debit and credit in one line, though sometimes both are zero).
Accounting is, of course, way older than computers, so accountants like to regularly "close the books" (checkpoint the state and generate reports).
Aside, I think the mental block for techies when it comes to accounting is just that many don't want to accept that accountants understand accounting. It looks like databases to them, and those are TECH!
- feanaro 6y agoWell, they are databases. That doesn't imply accountants don't understand accounting. Both can be true. I think a large factor in the "programmers reinterpreting accounting" phenomenon is the fact that accounting is full of somewhat idiosyncratic terminology and conventions which are somewhat counter to modern mathematical conventions. These conventions should still be upheld in order to be mutually intelligible with the accounting world, but it seems quite unlikely they are the optimum in terms of ergonomics and ease of understanding. If we designed accounting from scratch today, I doubt we would end up with these conventions. A naive programmer is perhaps in one of the best positions to see these idiosyncrasies and think "This is using the wrong conventions and can be made much simpler by just shifting some signs around!".