> Can anyone explain why 'income' is negative and 'expenses' are positive? It seems to me like it should be the other way around. This is something which trips

> Can anyone explain why 'income' is negative and 'expenses' are positive? It seems to me like it should be the other way around. This is something which trips a lot of folks up, but it has a very simple explanation: in double-entry accounting money always flows from one account to another, e.g. from income to a bank account, or from the bank account to an expense. The income account is always negative because money is almost always leaving it, and the expense account is always positive because money is almost always entering it (I wrote ‘almost always’ in both instances because one might need to repay erroneous income or one might get a refund from an expense).