Double entry accounting would have me move money into an "account" representing my ISP Well, no, unless you account your ISP as some important contractor or a

Double entry accounting would have me move money into an "account" representing my ISP Well, no, unless you account your ISP as some important contractor or a cofounder and have interest rates etc with them. If it is just a simple expense, you do the following: debit: expenses / basic needs credit: bank / account sum: $80 This way you can see your expenses on an “expenses” account regardless of where they came from. No need to scan for multiple sources, because they all end up on a single account. This is a beauty of accounting, you define not how, but what. You bought a tv? debit: My stuff / tv credit: Bank / account sum: $1000 Your tv broke? debit: Expenses / Breakage credit: My stuff / tv sum: <a remaining cost of tv, depending on amortization scheme> With single entry you either cannot do that, or have to scan all tables and invent a special field that represents type of an operation, in this case isExpense or shard tables by that criterion.