[jonahbenton]

Conceptually this is one transaction; from a book keeping (and beancount) perspective it is, or can be, two.

Often (in the US) the dates are different- debit from the bank on day X, post to credit card on day X + 1 or X + 2. For my stuff I want the dates in beancount to reflect the dates on the respective statements, so that the balances, which are date-specific, match.

So I capture these as two transactions. I do it as- debit the bank, credit the "ether", then debit the "ether" credit the credit card.

Beancount just wants the postings within a literal transaction to sum to zero. If this conceptual transaction is split into two literal transactions, with some fictional bridge account in between, they can live in different beancount files.