How the two views work
Every transaction in DoubleBooks can be read two ways. Flow says where the money came from and where it went. Accounting says debit and credit. A toggle at the top of the screen switches between them, and it is labeled with those two words.
The important part: these are not two records. It is one transaction, shown in two languages, and the toggle changes the words on the screen and never the figures.
One phone bill, both ways
You pay $60 for your phone out of checking. In Flow view, that reads the way you would say it out loud:
| From | To | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Checking | Phone | $60 |
In Accounting view, the same transaction reads like this:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Phone | $60 | |
| Checking | $60 |
Put them next to each other and the whole translation is two lines. The account money went to is the debit. The account it came from is the credit. That is the entire mapping, and it holds for every transaction in your books.
Nothing is stored twice to make this work. Your books keep debits and credits, because that is what a real set of books keeps, and Flow view is a different way of reading the same entries.
Getting paid reads the same way
A client pays you $1,200. In Flow, the money came from your consulting income and went to checking:
| From | To | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Consulting income | Checking | $1,200 |
In Accounting:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Checking | $1,200 | |
| Consulting income | $1,200 |
Same rule. Checking is where the money went, so checking is the debit.
The entries that only make sense in Accounting
Some records in a set of books are not a flow of money at all, and this is the honest limit of Flow view.
Three of them come up in ordinary books:
- Depreciation spreads the cost of something you already paid for across the years you use it.
- An opening balance states what an account held on the day your books start, before you recorded anything.
- Closing entries move a year's profit into equity when you close the year.
No money moves in any of them. There is nothing for "from" and "to" to point at, so they read as nonsense in Flow.
That is why Accounting view is always one click away rather than an advanced mode you switch on. When your books need an entry that is not a flow, the view that can say it is right there.
You can ignore all of this
Flow is what you get by default, and you never have to switch. You say where money came from and where it went, and the books underneath are real double-entry books that an accountant can read.
The toggle is there for the day you want to see it, or the day someone asks you for a trial balance. If the word "debit" is the part that bothers you, what a debit actually is is the short version.