Glossary and accounting signs

The words, balances and identifiers used throughout Kabacus.

Core terms

Term	Meaning
Books / ledger	The set of accounts, commodities and transactions you are keeping. A database can contain multiple ledgers, although the app does not yet expose a ledger selector.
Posting	One account’s part of a transaction. Real postings balance to zero, by commodity or through a supported cost.
Commodity	The unit of an amount: USD, EUR or another symbol. Symbols are case-sensitive.
Free money	A money account’s own balance, excluding the reserves below it.
Inclusive balance	An account and its subaccounts together; for a bank account this includes reserves.
Reserve / fund	Money set aside inside its home bank account. It is not a monthly budget.
Card reserve	Money earmarked to cover what a particular card owes.
Receivable / payable	What someone owes you / what you owe them.
Revision / head	The numbered state of the books used to detect concurrent changes.
Transaction id	A stable number assigned when a transaction is first recorded; editing keeps it.
Dry run	Apply and validate a proposed change in memory without saving it.

Positive and negative

Positive postings add to an account’s balance and negative postings subtract from it. A $25 bank purchase commonly posts +25 to expenses:groceries and −25 to assets:bank:checking. Income and liabilities normally carry negative ledger balances. The application presents income and equity as positive neutral amounts; this display convention does not change the stored signs.

Balance is not availability

A bank balance can include money already reserved for bills or cards. Cash on Hand is the spendable part. Similarly, a credit limit is not available cash and is not part of Cash on Hand.