{"id":"concept:debit","kind":"concept","label":"Debit","synonyms":["Dr","debit entry"],"definition":"A debit is the left side of a journal entry, and it increases asset and expense accounts while decreasing liability, equity, and income accounts.","summary":"Debit just means \"left side\" — not a withdrawal, not bad news. It grows assets and expenses: money arriving in checking is a debit, and so is a purchase hitting an expense account. On a liability, equity, or income account, a debit does the opposite — it shrinks the balance.","explanation":["Most explanations of debit reach for a mnemonic to memorize. Skip it. A debit is simply the left side of a journal entry — a directional label, the same way \"north\" doesn't mean \"up\" until you know what you're pointing at. What a debit actually does depends entirely on which account it hits.","The one rule that matters: assets and expenses grow with debits. Checking is an asset, so money arriving is a debit. Materials is an expense, so a purchase debits it. Debit a $120.50 hardware-store charge to Materials and it goes up by exactly that; debit an incoming $2,000 payment to Checking and it goes up too. In both cases the account is gaining value, and in both cases that gain is recorded as a debit, because both accounts are debit-normal.","On the other three account types — liability, equity, income — a debit does the opposite: it shrinks the balance. Paying down $300 of a credit card balance debits the Credit Card liability account, and the balance owed goes down, not up. This is the detail that trips people up: a debit isn't universally \"an increase.\" It increases whichever accounts are debit-normal, and decreases whichever aren't.","Internally, BalanceMCP stores every debit as a positive number of cents. A $120.50 debit to Materials is stored as 12050. That convention is what makes \"debits equal credits\" a literal arithmetic check the database can run on every entry before accepting it — the number itself carries the sign, not a separate flag."],"commonMistakes":["Assuming a debit always means a decrease, by analogy to a bank debit card withdrawal — in bookkeeping a debit increases an asset or expense account.","Treating \"debit\" as inherently bad news. A debit to an expense account isn't a win or a loss on its own; it depends entirely on the account.","Memorizing account-by-account which side is normal instead of learning the one rule (assets and expenses are debit-normal) that generates every case."],"category":"fundamentals","questions":[{"question":"Why does a debit increase my checking balance but decrease my credit card balance?","answer":"Because Checking is an asset (debit-normal) and Credit Card is a liability (credit-normal). A debit grows a debit-normal account and shrinks a credit-normal one — the same word, opposite effect, depending on the account."},{"question":"Is a debit the same as a withdrawal?","answer":"No — that's a specific, informal use of the word from banking. In bookkeeping, a debit is a side of an entry, and whether it grows or shrinks a balance depends on the account type."}],"url":"/glossary/debit","relatedTo":[{"id":"concept:credit","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Acredit"},{"id":"concept:normal-balance","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Anormal-balance"},{"id":"concept:journal-entry","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Ajournal-entry"},{"id":"concept:account","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aaccount"},{"id":"concept:asset","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aasset"},{"id":"concept:expense-account","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aexpense-account"},{"id":"concept:double-entry-bookkeeping","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Adouble-entry-bookkeeping"},{"id":"guide:debits-and-credits-explained","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/guide%3Adebits-and-credits-explained"},{"id":"account:1010-checking","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/account%3A1010-checking"}],"referencedBy":[{"id":"concept:double-entry-bookkeeping","label":"Double-Entry Bookkeeping","url":"/glossary/double-entry-bookkeeping"},{"id":"concept:credit","label":"Credit","url":"/glossary/credit"},{"id":"concept:journal-entry","label":"Journal Entry","url":"/glossary/journal-entry"},{"id":"concept:normal-balance","label":"Normal Balance","url":"/glossary/normal-balance"},{"id":"guide:debits-and-credits-explained","label":"Debits and Credits, Explained Without the Mnemonics","url":"/guides/debits-and-credits-explained"}],"license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","attribution":"BalanceMCP — https://balancemcp.com"}