The Double Entry Counting Method (2016)

Re:The Double Entry Counting Method (2016) by wruza on Sunday September 25, 2022 @10:35AM (#32971713)

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.

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Re:The Double Entry Counting Method (2016) by blep_ on Sunday September 25, 2022 @12:56PM (#32973289)

This requires you to know up front which expenses you want to track, though. If you don't, and you change your mind later, you get to do that table scan anyway, so you may as well actually record the metadata that makes it possible.

edit: I read what you're describing here as a single entry system if you just read "expense account" as "expense type"; double entry would be if you physically recorded each of those in two places. It's entirely possible we're arguing about semantics.

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