Balances, credits and debits

In the previous discussion the rules for the values of balances are simple positive or negative balances.

This is controversial. In the mediaeval west when the rules for double entry book keeping became established negatives numbers were considered absurd or invalid. This only really started to change in the nineteenth century.

So in order to allow the transactions the values are divided into credit and debit entries and then the difference is then taken to give the value. The smaller is taken from the larger and the balance is then either said to be credit or debit.

Journal entries

Conventionally following Cripps translation of Paciolo in a journal the entries are written with debits first and in a seperate left hand column and the credit entries second in the right hand column. This is confusing as the credit is the source and the debit is the destination.

Benedetto Cotruglis the Art of Trade he has it more sensibly as Niall Ferguson and I don’t think as Ferguson suggests that it is an unintentiol switch :

In the same way, every item must be written on both sides of
the sheet, that is, on the right-hand side of the book under “sums owed”
and on the left “sums owing.```

Contrugli was preparing for accounts for himself and as the convention is arbitrary it could be either way round.
It was only after Pacioli published his book with the opposite convention that accounting standards followed.