How the General Ledger Financial Reports display credits.

Overview

There are two conventions for the use of brackets on readysell financial reports

In some cases, a bracket is used to designate a credit and in other cases, a bracket is used to designate an exception

Explanation of Readysell financial reports:

When you run a Readysell General Ledger Trial Balance, any values that are a Credit will show in brackets.

If for example on your chart of accounts, the account of Accounts Payable is set to display as a 'Credit' then when you run your general ledger trial balance the value will be in brackets.

When you run a Readysell General Ledger Balance Sheet and/or Profit & Loss this uses the Exceptions approach.

If for example on your chart of accounts, the account of Accounts Payable is set to display as a 'Credit' then when you run your general ledger balance sheet or profit and loss the value will not show in brackets as it is an exception.
If you wish to see such accounts displayed in brackets you will need to change the field on the chart of accounts for that account to display as a Debit.

if the general ledger account credit/debit is set to credit, then it will only show in brackets if it is not in credit

if it is set to be a debit, then it will show in brackets if it is not a debit.

See the link for a further explanation: http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/use-of-parentheses

The table below will explain in more detail.

"Normally Debit or Credit" Setting	Actual Balance on the account	Displays As
Debit	Debit	Positive
Debit	Credit	Negative (with Brackets)
Credit	Debit	Negative (with Brackets)
Credit	Credit	Positive

Based on your Windows settings is where you control the negative vs the brackets

There is a setting on the gl accounts that controls how they are formatted on financial reports. That is whether they show as positive or negative.

As a consequence, you can't add up all of the debits and credit totals on portable accounts unless all the portable accounts have the same normal debit/credit setting as the parent account.

In this case, there are some accounts in COGS set up as normally debit and some as normally credit.

This does not affect the actual balance of the account, it just causes the balances to show in different signs on the break up of the financial reports.

All the totals on the report are correct it is just the signs on the breakup maybe different signs that show on the accounts themselves.

To fix this, all you need to do is change the debit/credit settings on some of the gl accounts within COGS to line up as a debit as per the parent cogs gl account