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Re:Accounting For Developers, Part I by rahimnathwani on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @01:25PM (#32499212)
"If you credit AP, you're increasing liability, if you credit AR, you're increasing assets."

This is incorrect. If you credit AR, you're decreasing assets.[0]

[0] https://www.freshbooks.com/hub/accounting/debit-and-credit#:....

Re:Accounting For Developers, Part I by jessaustin on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @02:25PM (#32499905)
Your link shows that AR is a subaccount of Assets and AP is a subaccount of Liabilities, so credits to each have the opposite effect with respect to a balance sheet. GP has a different understanding of the "polarity" of debits and credits, but if anything this seems to support rather than undermine proposition "A" above?
Re:Accounting For Developers, Part I by rahimnathwani on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @02:44PM (#32500125)
"so credits to each do indeed have the opposite effect with respect to a balance sheet"

I think what you mean here is that a debit balance in an asset account is presented as a positive amount, whereas a debit balance in a liability account would show as a negative amount.

This is true, but that doesn't mean a credit has the opposite effect depending on whether it's applied to an asset or liability account. Consider that you have two different accounts with your bank:

- a current account (usually the bank owes you money, i.e. usually a credit balance from the bank's POV)

- a loan account (you bought a car on credit, and owe the bank money, i.e. a debit balance from bank's POV)

For the bank, the current account is a liability ($1,000) and the loan account is an asset ($25,000).

When you deliver a bag containing $5,000 to the bank, the bank will credit one of these two accounts. They'll either increase the current account to $6,000, or decrease the loan account to $19,000.

In either case, the credit has the same effect: your net debt to the bank is decreased by $5k.

Re:Accounting For Developers, Part I by jwarden on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @05:03PM (#32501707)
rahimnathwani is correct here and has explained himself well. I generally don’t think of equity as a liability, but if you think of it is money owed to shareholders, then a credit can indeed be seen as an increase in money owed. Since debits always equal credits,

money OWNed = money OWed

And thus:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity