Re: At the end of my teather with LSMB

[Luke <..hidden..>]

On Tue, 27 May 2008, beamends wrote:

> to hide the things that cause confusion - debits and credits being "the
> wrong way round" being a prime example. Accountants might not have a
> problem with that, Joe Bloggs thinks "Sales" and "Purchases" - so why

They aren't, really.  "To the left side of" and "to the right side of" is 
all they mean.  Come to grips with that, and get into your head the bit 
about "certain accounts are increased on the right and decreased on the 
left, while others go the other way", and the deb vs. cred thing starts 
making more sense.
There are web sites which explain this well, and quickly.  One of the 
better ones, imo, is:
http://www.QuickMBA.com/accounting/fin/debits-credits/

I had to deal with this too, when I got hit with the cold water splash of 
double entry accounting.  It is counter intuitive, when you've spent your 
entire life in a single entry world.

I think what you want is a double entry accounting system, which 
looks like a single entry one, unless you open some "advanced" view or the 
like.

So two programs in one.

The problem with that, is that it encourages single entry thinking.  The 
second you have any kind of problem, incorrect entry, or the like, which 
is going to happen, you will need to suddenly start thinking in double 
entry to resolve it.  Trying to juggle those two systems in your head is 
not going to be as easy as you might like, and for most people it is going 
to be hellishly confusing most of the time.

More simple posting forms could be added (a cash transfer function with a 
from -> to interface might be good) to acompany invoices, purchase orders, 
sales orders, etc., but other than that, trying to obscure what's going on 
too much further, is probably not a good idea.

Luke