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>Most (not all) plain text accounting implementations use signed amounts instead of debits and credits. This makes them "double entry light" perhaps, but it has
by jimnotgym 5y ago
>Most (not all) plain text accounting implementations use signed amounts instead of debits and credits. This makes them "double entry light" perhaps, but it has been a rather successful simplification, intuitive to most newcomers.
They shouldn't do themselves down. I am an accountant and I have used several large systems that do exactly this in the database. It is also by far the preferred way to export a trial balance or gl account from any system to excel. It is the norm in the industry and in no way an innovation of plain text accounting.
- cwp 5y agoWhen you say "it is the norm in the industry" do you mean that accountants are moving away from debits and credits, or is it just that accounting software translates to signed numbers when dealing with non-accounting software such as databases and spreadsheets?
- jimnotgym 5y agoIt is totally normal to display debits and credits on screen in gui software as signed numbers too. It is very convenient to be able to sum a list and find a balance. It also means that the sum of the entire ledger must always be zero which is a common consistency check that is applied. This is how it is in SAP, Coda, Sage and Netsuite at least.
- smichael 5y agoThanks for these comments, good to know!