The syntax above can be learned easily enough, but double-entry boils down to: Each transaction shows both where money goes and where it comes from, the sum should be 0.
Where it goes and comes from are "accounts", which may or may not correlate to actual accounts like you might think of in personal finance. There are 3 categories of accounts: expenses, assets, liabilities. You own the second two, they are your cash, checking, savings, brokerage as assets and your mortgage, car loan, CCs as liabilities. Expenses are where you spend money outside of your own accounts.
Before getting to expenses, you may have accounts like this for your assets and liabilities:
Whenever you transact your money goes from one place to another, so a car payment may look like:
2021-09-05 Car Payment
assets:checking $-500
liabilities:car $500
Positive means that that account gets the money, negative it loses the money. Note that it sums to $0. If there were an interest component we may do this:
2021-09-05 Car Payment
assets:checking $-500
liabilities:car $400
expenses:interest $100
Expenses are not owned by you. They can be broad categories or more specific. Maybe you have two residences and utilities at both:
expenses:primary:electric:edison:1234 -- your account number
expenses:secondary:electric:pandg:1234
Where it goes and comes from are "accounts", which may or may not correlate to actual accounts like you might think of in personal finance. There are 3 categories of accounts: expenses, assets, liabilities. You own the second two, they are your cash, checking, savings, brokerage as assets and your mortgage, car loan, CCs as liabilities. Expenses are where you spend money outside of your own accounts.
Before getting to expenses, you may have accounts like this for your assets and liabilities:
Whenever you transact your money goes from one place to another, so a car payment may look like: Positive means that that account gets the money, negative it loses the money. Note that it sums to $0. If there were an interest component we may do this: Expenses are not owned by you. They can be broad categories or more specific. Maybe you have two residences and utilities at both: I wouldn't go that far, I might do: But the choice is up to you, both work. Think of them as hierarchical tags.