| > You don't want negative numbers because that would require the description of a category to change based on whether it is positive or negative That's actually already how it works, the kind of inverse you use depends on if the account is credit-normal or debit-normal. You end up in the same place. > Imagine showing negative revenue. That would be mostly useless. Revenue is already credit instead of debit, which if you were consistent in using negative numbers, a negative revenue be completely correct (so you would want to sweat if revenue was a positive number). It's weird, but it lets your cash on hand be a positive number, which is just a necessary consequence of the system. > Imagine how misleading it could be to show $0 in expenses last month, when in reality, you had $100 in expenses, but you subtracted $100 out because you returned some big purchase from last month and got a refund. Wouldn't that be accurate? This would be a debit of 100 and a credit of 100 which nets a balance of 0. But individually you would see the transactions and could sum the credits and debits if you were so inclined. Alternatively, contra-accounts exist if reporting these individually is material for some reason. |