Every time money is exchanged, it has to come from somewhere and it has to go somewhere -- that's two places it need to be recorded (or "entered in the books").
Money can not be created out of thin air, and it can not be destroyed. Every movement of money has to be accounted for, which is why it's called "accounting". Double-entry accounting means you have to account for where the money comes from, and you have to account for where it goes, and each of those is a separate entry and it all has to add up to zero.
Where it can become confusing is when money leaves you or comes in from an external source. There are still two entries, but one entry is in one party's books and the other entry is the other's. For example, I get a paycheque and I enter my income in a little book with green paper and DB/CR columns. At the same time, my employer has entered an expense in their book. Double entries.
>Where it can become confusing is when money leaves you or comes in from an external source. There are still two entries, but one entry is in one party's books and the other entry is the other's. For example, I get a paycheque and I enter my income in a little book with green paper and DB/CR columns. At the same time, my employer has entered an expense in their book. Double entries.
I agree with your first two paragraphs but not with this last one. When money leaves you or comes in from an external source, there is always some proxy account for that external party in your own books. And the whole situation is mirrored in the accounting system of the external party (unless they are a consumer). Each party records two entries.
Yes. I have a proxy account with one entry (say, "expenses: bank fees"). They have a proxy account with one entry (say "income: bank fees"). Between the two proxy accounts there are two entries. Money can be neither created nor destroyed.
> Where it can become confusing is when money leaves you or comes in from an external source. There are still two entries, but one entry is in one party's books and the other entry is the other's. For example, I get a paycheque and I enter my income in a little book with green paper and DB/CR columns. At the same time, my employer has entered an expense in their book. Double entries.
NO.
I mean your employer probably has a set of books, but that's not true in your own local set of books.
In your local set of books you would have something like:
ACME, inc Employment Income $100 DEBIT
Bank Account $100 CREDIT
You are accounting for ACME, Inc's Employment expense in your set of books too.
When you send a payment to your Power Company:
Power Company Expense: $100 CREDIT
Bank Account: $100 DEBIT
I mean if you are categorizing expenses you might do something like that. If you aren't, you might title one account "Expenses" and spend it all there, it doesn't really matter what you call the accounts, just that you are consistent.
in my employment income account that money has not come out of thin air. Remember, money can not be created nor destroyed in this system. Somewhere there is a matching entry something like
bregma, services rendered $100 CREDIT
in my employer's books. And that money, in turn, was probably moved in from some other account internally. Mean time the only real movement of "money" was an electronic communication between two banks (my employers and mine), with a matching entry in an account in each.
Things like income accounts and expense accounts are not magic sources or sinks for money flows. They're just half of a double entry system with the other half somewhere else.
I agree generally speaking, but what does that have to do with your local books? Nothing.
You almost certainly don't have access to your employer's books.
Also, the ledger entries for "bregma, services rendered" i.e. payroll will be much more complicated than that, there will be taxes, deductions, etc they have to account for as well.
> what does that have to do with your local books?
It's how double-entry bookkeeping works. Money can neither be created nor destroyed. On your local books you have an account where money goes and appears to be destroyed, but in reality there is a doubled entry in someone else's books. Just because you're unaware of it does not mean it does not exist.
And it's true that bookkeepers will have splits in their ledger in which one transaction consists of multiple entries, but that's a convenient shortcut for consolidating multiple items each of which is one half of a double entry. It has no bearing on how double-entry bookkeeping works and just needlessly complicates a description of the fundamentals. It has only to do with conventions for recording double-entry bookkeeping, just like using DB and CR to indicate whether entry is moving money into or out of an account.
The fact that you have a counterparty with his own books has nothing to with the phrase “double-entry accounting”, it is a method of keeping your own books.
Sorry, but no. I have no idea why you think double entry means 1 of the entries is in some other persons books that you don't have access to is somehow useful. Double entry is 100% local to a singular set of books.
The point of double entry accounting is to avoid many simple mistakes. If you can't access a 3rd parties books to check, what is the point of double entry accounting, when you only hold a single entry?
I literally have no idea how you think this even remotely makes sense.
> Money can neither be created nor destroyed.
Totally as an aside, money can indeed be created and destroyed, the govt and even banks do it all the time[0]. But I agree practically speaking from an accounting perspective in a singular person/organizations books money isn't created or destroyed it's just moved around. But for double entry accounting, it's 100% not useful to talk about money in some other person's books, it's irrelevant.
Might be the slight fever talking, but wouldn't the debit and credit be exactly the other way around? When you get paid by your employer, in your books the money enters your bank account ("debit") and is coming from an (abstract) employment income account ("credit").
When you pay your power company, the money leaves your bank account ("credit") and enters the (abstract) power company expenses, utilities expenses, or whatever account ("debit").
That method only works if money can be created out of thin air, and also destroyed. The grandparent comment was pretty clear that money cannot be created out of thin air, nor can it be destroyed.
While money can’t be created or destroyed (unless you run a central bank…), value can be. Ledgers always have a specific perspective, and that perspective can assign a different value to something than someone else.
In the case of gifting something, from the perspective of the gifter, they destroyed some value they had on their books and got nothing of value in return. There’s an account type for tracking why your net worth decreased - Expense accounts. The giftee received value and they have an account to track why their net worth increased - Income accounts. If value was objective, then the net worth decrease on one side would exactly equal the net worth increase on the other.
With something like cash, the unit of account and the store of value are the same thing - so 100 USD objectively the same value in everyone’s ledger. But say you were gifted a painting. The gifter may have valued this painting at 100 USD, while the giftee actually thinks it’s worth 50 USD. If the gifter didn’t tell them the price, there would be no way of knowing they recorded different numbers. So in this transaction value was destroyed.
The same thing happens when you buy and sell things. Say the painting was sold instead of gifted, then the difference in what the buyer and seller thought the painting was worth is value that was created and destroyed. Each person’s net worth would go up or down depending on whether they thought the painting was a bargain or overpriced. When providing services, value is created at the moment of usage and a ledger will track the creation of value in your landscaping business.
> While money can’t be created or destroyed (unless you run a central bank…)
That's not the case. Money, of course, is just a promise to provide something of some defined value at some point in the future. Anyone can make such promises. Heck, that's why we invented accounting – to keep track of the promises outstanding and delivered!
If a bookkepper destroyed or created money they would be in a great deal of trouble and probably end up working for the state for two years less a day.
Money is just a promise. Anyone can create those. Which should be quite obvious. When you go to work to, as we literally say, make money, your employer is making a promise that in exchange for you work you can take something of some defined value later. Later, you will take that promise and turn it into something of value, such as food. Once spent, the money is destroyed. The promise is no longer valid. The deal is done.
Currency is a promise to a particular entity, such as a central bank. A central bank will loan you something of some value, you equally promise to give them something of equal value (we'll ignore interest for simplicity) back at a later date. Indeed, only the central bank can accept promises made to the central bank. If you accepted a promise on behalf of the central bank, without explicit authority, then you are quite right that trouble is coming your way.
Because there is a trust component required in promises, often promises made – such as the promise of your employer to feed you later – will be backed by a promise to the central bank. The central bank has a military to send if someone really tries to play nasty with promises made, so that carries a lot more trust than if you and I wrote up our own 'IOU'. This may be why you see money and currency as being one and the same. Often they are, but not necessarily so.
Accounting is simply for keeping track of promises. That's why we invented it. You don't need accounting for barter. It is the promises that necessitate accounting in order to keep track of what promises are outstanding and what are fulfilled. A bookkeeper doesn't create money per se, but they certainly account for money created and destroyed by the entity they are bookkeeping for.
I think you’re right that currency is technically what I meant by money in that sentence. Like you said most people equate the two, which is why I prefer to use the word “value” for the various promises we track in accounting. It just has less baggage with most people since it’s more abstract. Value can definitely be created or destroyed from the perspective of the entity whose net value we’re tracking.
AR and AP accounts track promises, and as you point out, bank accounts and cash are also conceptually no different than other AR account. I call these asset and liability accounts State accounts. They track the current state of your promises and expectations. Since a promise can be reneged or an expectation not met, we need accounts that balance changes in State accounts when value is created or destroyed. That’s what income and expense accounts do — which I call Change accounts [1]
> You don't need accounting for barter.
I get what you’re mean, but I think a good way to get your head around multi-currency accounting is to think of it as double-entry bartering. Each currency only has value because it can be swapped with another currency at a certain rate. Which is basically bartering. How many sheep for how much grain? How many USD for how many GBP?
The interesting part is bringing double-entry into this:
- how do you balance a transaction when the two sides are in different currencies?
- How do you track the exchange rate between currencies?
The answer to each question is the other question. You balance entries by adding two more lines that track gain/loss due to exchange rate fluctuations. I did a talk on this at Fintech Devcon [2] and we cover this in our docs [3]
> I prefer to use the word “value” for the various promises we track in accounting.
Value is the opposite side of the transaction, though. Money is the promise of value, not value itself.
> Which is basically bartering.
Yes, it most definitely is, but the difference with bartering, by definition, is that the value is always delivered immediately. As in, you give me grain and I give you sheep at the same time. We both have what we want, the deal is done, and there is no need for accounting as there is no reason to ever think about it again.
But if, instead, you give me grain and I give you nothing but agree to later give you sheep after they have been fed the grain and are ready for slaughter, then we have an unbalanced transaction. You gave me value, but I gave you nothing – just a promise.
Enter accounting. I record that you gave me grain and I record that I made you a promise (money created). You record that I gave you a promise and that you gave me grain. My books will show a loss (promises outstanding) and you will show a profit (promises yet to be delivered). This gives us both a reminder that the deal isn't yet done, which is useful because people are prone to forgetfulness. Also, perhaps even more significantly, you can pass on the promise. The person who finally receives the value in the future may not be the person who made the deal originally, so accounting is critical to settling the promises across a chain of trades.
No money was created or destroyed. The "cash gifted" account would have a corresponding entry in the recipients books reflecting the cash received. Unless he's delinquent about updating his books in which case it's implied but not realized. Few (unmedicated) individuals are going to track every transaction to that level though.
If it was important to account for the cash donation, the company would require a receipt in exchange. If it's part of a coverup the receipt may be for something unrelated but at least the books are in good order.
Cash went out. One half of the double entry is correct. But nothing came back in return. There is no corresponding element of trade to account for. The transaction doesn't balance. Which is obvious in human terms. That's the point of a gift – the transaction isn't supposed to balance! But formal accounting methods are not as fluid as people are.
So, of course, in reality money was created (and then destroyed, it being a gift) in order to make the transaction whole. But as far as this magical fairytale land where money can't be created the entry doesn't work. You can't account for nothing.
Let's say it's not a gift. Let's say someone is borrowing $1,000 cash instead. The same applies. There is no corresponding element in trade to account for. It doesn’t balance. Thus, when the cash goes out you need to create money out of thin air to satisfy the other side of the transaction, which is later destroyed when the cash is returned.
You're misunderstanding double-entry bookkeeping. Something does not have to come into the company got every transaction moving something out of the company. If your company gives $1000 to Billy, you document a $1000 debit from your gift account and a $1000 to Billy's account payable. The goal isn't to get any one account to zero but to get a source and destination recorded separately for every movement of funds.
Lending would be at least two sets of doubly-recorded transactions.
> The goal isn't to get any one account to zero but to get a source and destination recorded separately
Right, because transactions are actually two-sided. I give you something, you give me something in return. That's how people work with each other. And, as such, we account for a source and destination because that matches what actually happens.
But often times you only offer a promise. For example, I write some software for you, and in return you offer me food. But I'm not hungry right now, and I certainly don't want food that is going to spoil before I get around to eating it, so instead you promise to give me fresh food sometime in the future when I am hungry.
How do you account for that? You received software services, but gave nothing back in return other than a promise. Well, what if you recorded the promise? Software services in, promise out. You got your software, I get my food, the credit and debit accounts match. Everyone is happy.
Congratulations, you just created money out of thin air! -- And now, later on, I am feeling hungry and am ready to take you up on your food offer. You give me the food, I give back the promise, food out, promise in, I'm fed, debits match credits, and the money is destroyed.
That's exactly why we invented accounting: To keep track of the money being created and destroyed. You wouldn't need accounting if promises never needed to be made. Without promises, you'd have the software services, I'd have the food, and we'd have no reason to think about the transaction ever again. It is the promise that has us wanting to look back to make sure that promises outstanding are made good.
> Money can not be created out of thin air, and it can not be destroyed.
Yet accounting is necessary because money is created out of thin air. Money is just the representation of debt, an IOU. There needs to be a record of it in order to know that a debt was created and that a debt was destroyed.
More practically, let's say you give me corn today, and I promise to deliver some of the chickens fed that corn to you after it is ready to for slaughter. Money keeps track of the promise outstanding. We record that promise, or account for it if you will, so that we remember that there is a promise and so that we can later ensure that the promise was delivered upon as agreed. Something that becomes especially important when you realize that promises can be traded on to other people who weren't party to the initial deal. Perhaps you don't really want chicken, but would prefer a watch instead. Luckily the watch maker would like to eat chicken for dinner down the line, so you give him the promise of chicken in exchange for the watch. So on, and so on.
Realistically, double-entry accounting is really quadruple-entry accounting. You record that something was received and you record that a promise was made, then, later on, you record that something was delivered as promised and also record that the promise is no longer outstanding (or in reverse if you are on the opposite end of the transaction). A profit indicates that people still owe you things that you haven't collected upon. A loss indicates that you still owe people things that you haven't yet delivered.
Money can not be created out of thin air, and it can not be destroyed. Every movement of money has to be accounted for, which is why it's called "accounting". Double-entry accounting means you have to account for where the money comes from, and you have to account for where it goes, and each of those is a separate entry and it all has to add up to zero.
Where it can become confusing is when money leaves you or comes in from an external source. There are still two entries, but one entry is in one party's books and the other entry is the other's. For example, I get a paycheque and I enter my income in a little book with green paper and DB/CR columns. At the same time, my employer has entered an expense in their book. Double entries.