Credit is a formal bookkeeping and accounting term that comes from the Latin word credere, which means "to believe". The opposite of a credit is a debit. Credit is abbreviated Cr, while debit is abbreviated Dr. Accountancy (British English) or accounting (American English) is the process of maintaining, auditing, and processing financial information for business purposes. ... Accountancy (British English) or accounting (American English) is the process of maintaining, auditing, and processing financial information for business purposes. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... link title Debit is an accounting and bookkeeping term that comes from the Latin word debere which means to owe. ...

A credit changes the balance of an account. Asset and expense accounts decrease in value when credited, whereas liability, equity, and revenue accounts increase in value when credited. This distinction is somewhat counterintuitive, until the nature of those accounts is more closely scrutinized. For example, revenue is coded as a credit. After recording a day's sales, the company will have credited a certain amount in revenue, and since credits are negative numbers, the balance grows more and more negative. An adjustment to revenue would need to be a debit, because its purpose is to bring the revenue totals closer to zero. In business and accounting an asset is anything owned which can produce future economic benefit, whether in possession or by right to take possession, by a person or a group acting together, e. ... In accounting, an expense is a general term for an outgoing payment made by a business or individual. ... In the most general sense, a liability is anything that is a hindrance, or puts one at a disadvantage. ... This article is about concept of equity in Anglo-American jurisprudence. ... Revenue is a US business term for the amount of money that a company can receive from its activities, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. ...

For instance, the journal entry for paying the telephone bill might look like this:

The telephone company would record the exact same transaction (from their side) like this:

Many people who have no formal education in accounting often assume that a debit decreases a balance because use of a bank's debit card decreases the balance in the customer's account. However, it is called a debit card because, from the bank's perspective the customer's account is a liability. By withdrawing money, the customer is decreasing the bank's liability. Since liability accounts normally have a credit balance, the withdrawal of cash from a banking account is reflected on the bank's balance sheet as a debit. A debit card is an ISO 7810 card which physically resembles a credit card, and, like a credit card, is used as an alternative to cash when making purchases. ... In formal bookkeeping and accounting, a balance sheet is a statement of the book value of a business or other organization or person at a particular date, usually at the end of its fiscal year, as distinct from an income statement, also known as a statement of profit and loss...