[moneydance] Help !! Please tell me I'm crazy !! or dumb or..

[Fuzzy Fox]

Katahdin <MoneyDance at intermod.net> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, for old guys like me who learned it one way, basic
> accounting standards, it was/is still confusing when you're looking at
> historical JE (journal entries), which in my case are mostly splits to
> one type or another acct.  It's like having to drive on the left (or
> right) depending on where you are !!

I was just telling you how Moneydance works; it doesn't mean I think it
makes sense, or that I think it should work that way.  :)

> So how about the Income / Expense accts?

You know, I have never looked closely at these.  My assumption would
have been that Income accounts, because you draw money from them and
store them into your accounts, should have Negative balances.  And
Expense accounts should have positive balances, from all the money you
are transferring into them.

However, to my surprise, they both have positive balances.  And this is
done by swapping the Increase / Decrease columns in the Income account
type.

> BUT - One of the reasons, I (and many others) liked the original Dos
> Quicken, is that the accounting transactions were clean and simple.

I came from the old Quicken days, too (I still use Ctrl-Alt-Q hotkey, to
launch Moneydance!), and I always thought the fact that Credit Cards and
Loans had Positive balances when you owed money to them, just made
sense.  The bills that the banks sent you display the amounts in this
manner, so it was consistent with that.

I always thought Moneydance was simply being slavishly consistent to its
own internal accounting model, and that was the reason these accounts
showed negative balances all the time.  But now that I've seen how
Income accounts look, I realize that Moneydance is not even following
its own rules consistently, and I find that that annoys me.

Of course, Intuit no longer makes any version of Quicken that I am
interested in using.  Moneydance is the best around.  :)

-- 
 Fuzzy Fox <fox at foxtaur.com>
  "Why a man would want a wife is a big mystery to some people.
   Why a man would want two wives is a bigamystery."