Accounting and Database design, storing debit and credit amount

Question

QUESTION: In the case below should I have stored all my amount as positives decimal amounts then flag the amount as either being a \"Debit\" or \"Credit\" rather than storing d

Answer 1

Here is a transaction detail schema from a great book called "The Data Model Resource Book". This schema meets all the recording requirements without using two columns.

PK TransactionID - int
PK TransactionDetailSequenceID - smallint
   Amount decimal
   CreditDebitFlag char(1)

Simple and effective, and it doesn't use extraneous columns as other answers here suggest. One column to store all the numeric value data and still gives you the ability to track asset and liability accounts properly.