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Debits and credits in double-entry bookkeeping are entries made in account ledgers to record changes in value resulting from business transactions. A debit entry in an account represents a transfer of value to that account, and a credit entry represents a transfer from the account.
The primary aim of the double-entry system is to keep track of debits and credits and ensure that the sum of these always matches up to the company assets, a calculation carried out by the accounting equation. It is based on the idea that each transaction has an equal effect.
The accounting equation is a statement of equality between the debits and the credits. The rules of debit and credit depend on the nature of an account. For the purpose of the accounting equation approach, all the accounts are classified into the following five types: assets, capital, liabilities, revenues/incomes, or expenses/losses.
The debit column is then totalled, and then the credit column is totalled. The two totals must agree—which is not by chance—because under the double-entry rules, whenever there is a posting, the debits of the posting equal the credits of the posting.
Transactions are listed in an accounting journal that shows a company's debit and credit balances. The journal entry can consist of several recordings, each of which is either a debit or a credit. The total of the debits must equal the total of the credits, or the journal entry is considered unbalanced.
In bookkeeping, an account refers to assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and equity, as represented by individual ledger pages, to which changes in value are chronologically recorded with debit and credit entries. These entries, referred to as postings, become part of a book of final entry or ledger.
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In bookkeeping, "balance" is the difference between the sum of debit entries and the sum of credit entries entered into an account during a financial period. [1] When total debits exceed the total credits, the account indicates a debit balance. The opposite is true when the total credit exceeds total debits, the account indicates a credit balance.