Is it valid to have an accounting entry with a value of zero?

Question

If so:

What would be the use cases of such an entry?
Is it a debit, or a credit, or something else entirely?

Context: I'm developing software that has accounting functionality and was writing database queries to get debits & credits

Debits: where amount < 0
Credits where amount > 0

and realized that doesn't account for zero, which I'm not even sure whether I need to account for...

ApplePie · Answer

One use case I can see for it is for tracing system-generated entries. It's very common to have lots of book entries be fully automated. The presence of those entries, however, does enable anyone looking at the ledgers to see that the entries were passed but with nil amounts. If they are not present, then one has to investigate why the entries were not posted which can be very difficult to do.

Answered by ApplePie on December 17, 2020

Is it valid to have an accounting entry with a value of zero?

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