Accountants and bookkeepers record transactions as debits and credits while keeping the accounting equation constantly in balance. This process is called double-entry bookkeeping. Double-entry bookkeeping records both sides of a transaction — debits and credits — and the accounting equation remains in balance as transactions are recorded.
For example, if a transaction decreases cash $25,000, then the other side of the transaction is a $25,000 increase in some other asset, or a $25,000 decrease in a liability, or a $25,000 increase in an expense (to cite three possibilities).This illustration summarizes the basic rules for debits and credits. By long-standing convention, debits are shown on the left and credits on the right. An increase in a liability, owners’ equity, revenue, and income account is recorded as a credit, so the increase side is on the right. The recording of all transactions follows these rules for debits and credits.
![Rules for debits and credits.](https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/239192.image0.jpg)
Notice the horizontal and vertical lines under the accounts in the illustration above. These lines form the letter “T.” Although the actual accounts maintained by a business don’t necessarily look like T accounts, accounts usually have one column for increases and another column for decreases. In other words, an account has a debit column and a credit column. Also an account may have a running balance column to continuously keep track of the account’s balance.