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Comment by asdajksah2123 | Hacker News Reader

Here's something that always trips me up when I look into non professional software for double entry accounting (or more accurately, instructions around them).

It's been a long time, so I may be getting it wrong, but I do have some introductory information of accounting. And according to that, in a transaction such as salary received, the accounting would look something like:

Income: Salary - Credit

Assets: Checking - Debit.

The Golden rule/s that apply here (Debit the receiver, credit the giver)

However, looking at the tutorial, the example given is:

2022/01/01 Salary

Income:Salary:Acme (Debit Account)

Assets:Checking (Credit Account)

This is the opposite of what I expect, however, I see this all the time when looking at tutorials/information written by SW devs.

What am I missing or is everyone else just getting it wrong?

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"Debits and credits are nothing more than “increases” and “decreases” to accounts." Don't try to apply logic; it is just a convention: debits to the left, credits to the right.

In particular, the first example above is correct. An asset account is increased by debits; a credit increases a revenue account.

Salary received:

Income: Salary - Credit

Assets: Checking - Debit.

Most tutorials for financial services are written for bank account users.

People refer to their bank account colloquially as a "debit account" and "credit account" because those are the types of accounts offered to them by a bank. From the bank's perspective, a consumer debit account is (correctly) considered a "debit" since any money deposited into the account by the account owner is an asset for the bank.

Actually shouldn't any money deposited into the bank be a liability for the bank?

No, it's the opposite, $ in customer's account is a liability for the bank to those customers, so the account is credited on +

The banks cash account is debited for balance

The gnuCash documentation has it as you describe: debits checking and credits salary.

https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/gnucash/1.6.4/arch/i3...

Thats correct with DE accounting. However I always assumed, the logic followed here is that the money has been "debited from" the INCOME account and "CREDITED to" Assets/Checkings.

Debit from employer's account, credited to your bank.

My somewhat limited understanding of this is that from your perspective, an increase in your asset/cash account would be a debit.

A big confusion for me initially was that my banks always talked about crediting my account whenever money was deposited/added to my account.

I finally understood it when I realized that from the banks perspective, an increase in my account is an increase in their liability towards me; they now owe me more money. Which is why they call it crediting my account.

So now I think of it like this: an increase in an asset is always a debit, an increase in liability is always a credit.

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