I’m starting to understand the accounting system a bit now. It’s actually not that different from classical accounting. Only the way it is operated in SambaPOS is a bit different.
Accounts
Credit and debit accounts are technically the same thing in SambaPOS.
If you want a credit account, you make sure it always has a negative balance.
If you want a debit account, you make sure it always has a positive balance.
So, accounts with a balance between brackets are credit accounts and the other accounts are debit accounts.
credit accounts (negative balance):
sales
customer accounts
SambaCard accounts
tips
tax
debit accounts (positive balance):
cash
receivables
discount
bank accounts
To understand the accounting system better, you have to realize when you see negative numbers (balance between brackets), that doesn’t really mean the amount is negative. It means it’s a credit account. There’s a difference between the amount shown and its ‘absolute value’, which is the actual amount no matter if it’s positive or negative.
That the Sales account balance is between brackets does not mean you have negative sales, it means it’s a credit account like in classical accounting.
Account statements/transactions
Taking money out of an account or adding to it, you can do with an account transaction.
Account transactions take money away from the source account and add it to the target account.
They put the amount in the ‘credit’ field of the source field and also in the ‘debit’ field of the target account.
To ‘debit’ a credit account or ‘credit’ a debit account like in classical accounting you have to select the account in the ‘source account’ field of the Account Transaction.
This will add the amount to its ‘credit’ field, causing the balance to decrease.
For a credit account this means its ‘absolute value’ (amount without brackets) will go up.
For a debit account this means its ‘absolute value’ (amount without brackets) will go down.
To ‘credit’ a credit account or ‘debit’ a debit account like in classical accounting you have to select the account in the ‘target account’ field of the Account Transaction.
This will add the amount to its ‘debit’ field, causing the balance to increase.
For a credit account this means its ‘absolute value’ (amount without brackets) will go down.
For a debit account this means its ‘absolute value’ (amount without brackets) will go up.
So, for increasing/decreasing the ‘absolute value’ of an account:
to increase the ‘absolute value’ of a credit account (Sales, SambaCard, etc):
you select the account in the ‘source account’ field of an Account Transaction
to decrease the ‘absolute value’ of a credit account (Sales, SambaCard, etc):
you select the account in the ‘target account’ field of an Account Transaction
to increase the ‘absolute value’ of a debit account (Cash, Receivables, etc):
you select the account in the ‘target account’ field of an Account Transaction
to decrease the ‘absolute value’ of a debit account (Cash, Receivables, etc):
you select the account in the ‘source account’ field of an Account Transaction