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

Though there is already an accepted answer which is very too the point of the question but I also want to share my opinion because it may help others in decide specially when they are designing their database!

Overall both have their own cons and pros and matter can be easily ended by using abs() as in accepted answer! But the problem comes when you talk across teams where different people may have different mind and believe me saving (-ve) values caused more confusions actually, specially if they are directly reading values from database!

I am not against of saving -ve values in database when debit in most cases but saving +ve leads to less confusions actually, even as database programmer, because we always have a column of telling (is it Debit or Credit) and who ever is going to write code can easily convert it at App Level.

Only exception comes with using sum(value) at database level but in reality this is least used scenario because in accounting mostly we are showing running balances and at app level we could use (+) or (-ve).

The point I want to raise is that the database can be used a Company perspective or Customer perspective and now companies have Data Analysts who think from both perspective and once we save just +ve numbers it becomes easier to remember because we already have a flag to know what value is what!