Accounting for computer scientists (2011)
I&#x27;m eternally interested in learning more about accounting, but I think this is missing crucial information to actually explain what &quot;accounting&quot; is while laying on this patronizing anti-intellectual &quot;accountants use hard words&quot; writing style.<p>1. What are you trying to solve by &quot;doing accounting&quot;?  After reading this article, it seems like it&#x27;s some sort of arbitrary aesthetic, like people who think the point of organizing is to have no more papers on your desk.<p>2. How do the actions in this guide solve those questions?  Why make a graph?  Why make extra buckets?  Why color them? Relatedly, I couldn&#x27;t find an answer to &quot;why is double entry bookkeeping revolutionary&quot; despite spending a fair amount of time searching.  I think it&#x27;s either related to manual accounting (i.e. not relevant to computers) or is directly related to this question.<p>I appreciate the mapping of accounting terms to graph features, but the title is way too grand for the contents.  I just noticed another commenter who seems to know a lot more than me says roughly the same (although much more negatively).<p>In addition, here are some things I&#x27;d like to know (in addition to the above, although I have guesses to the answers to some):<p>1. How to deal with accounting over time? When received payments and made payments are at different dates, amortization, etc.  If you&#x27;re trying to identify missed payments, time disconnects create permanent gaps which may or may not be an issue.<p>2. How to deal with multiple currencies.  Related to variance over time: exchange rates, balance calculation, etc.<p>I feel like &quot;make a graph&quot; is the easy 5m answer and the first thing you arrive at if you look up double entry bookkeeping.<p>Lastly, I agree that accounting is a fundamental skill, but before you can do accounting you need _data_.  All transactions, categorized, all accounts, all balances.  This is the hard part.  If you&#x27;re an accountant and this is your job, okay.  If I need to manage N accounts in my time after work, well that&#x27;s a significant chunk of my non-work time.<p>Mint doesn&#x27;t work well outside major western spheres.  For a while I maintained my own scrapers, but I&#x27;ve fallen back to &quot;just spend as little as possible and you&#x27;ll avoid going negative&quot; which is not where I want to be but until there&#x27;s open banking here I don&#x27;t see many options.