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I'm building a budgeting database application/program and I'm looking for two words as names of tables or variables in it. This question seeks one of them:

It encompasses the following: I have bills & expenses, and I have sources of income. I'm looking for a hypernym that encompasses all those.

To clarify, there are things I'm not looking for:

a. There are questions here already on english.stackexchange that ask for a hypernym for income/expense or debit/credit but the answers all seem to refer to the transaction (the event of transferring money). I'm distinctly not looking for a word for that (the word transaction covers that I believe).

b. One might think of a word like "entity" that might refer to the company AT&T that I pay the phone bill to, and Apple, that I pay my iCloud subscription to each month. But maybe I also pay Apple for my Apple Music subscription each month. Those last two are two different items. So I'm not looking for a name for the companies or other entities I'm making the payments to.

I get a monthly bill from AT&T for the phone. I get a monthly bill from Apple for Apple Music, and another monthly bill from Apple for my iCloud subscription. Those are three records in this table (even though two are from the same company). If I was only looking at outgoings I might call this table Bills, but I'm looking for a hypernym that would encompass those and incomes as well: eg. two other records in this table might be 'salary from my job', and 'rent paid to me for a property I rent out'.

Edit/update: As Roger Sinasohn pointed out in the comments: yes, I'm looking for a countable noun.

An example sentence could be where I click a button to delete a bunch of these records, and need to pop up a confirmation warning first:

"Do you really want to delete these whatevers?"

I'd really rather not have to say "Do you really want to delete these incomes and expenses?" or whatever.

It doesn't have to be one word. eg. another question asked for a hypernym for anywhere that serves food (restaurant, cafe, fast-food place, etc.). If that's what I was looking for here, then "eating establishment" might be ok. But if more than one word, it can't just be a string of all the words I'm trying to find the hypernym for (incomes, expenses, etc.).

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    they are all ledger line-Items
    – Jim
    Commented Oct 2, 2018 at 6:07
  • @Jim Thanks. So I read up on ledgers and what they are. From what I can tell, in accounting, isn't a ledger line-item simply an account? Or is there some difference? Might "account" be the word I'm looking for here?
    – DavidT
    Commented Nov 23, 2018 at 2:31

2 Answers 2

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I would call these things your finances. Consider definition 1.2 from the Oxford Dictionaries:

finance

noun

[mass noun]

  1. The management of large amounts of money, especially by governments or large companies.

    [as modifier] ‘the firm's finance department’

    1.1 Monetary support for an enterprise.

    ‘the clearing banks are important sources of finance’

    1.2 finances The monetary resources and affairs of a state, organization, or person.

    ‘the club's finances are stretched to the limit’

So all of your expenses and income comprise your finances.

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  • Hmm... interesting, but I think "finance" is too generic a term here. Almost everything in the entire application could be referred to as finances. I'd prefer something a little more specific. One other point too: Ideally I need a countable noun. a bill, an expense, a salary. Since there's no such thing as "a finance" it's not a good choice here. Still, thanks!
    – DavidT
    Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 16:50
  • I understand... but I'm not sure there's a single word that encompasses expense items and revenue items. I think the closest you'll likely get is, as @Jim suggested, general ledger line items.
    – Roger Sinasohn
    Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 17:32
  • Also, you might want to edit your question to note that you're looking for a countable noun and add a sample sentence (such as you might write for documentation) showing how the word you're looking for would be used. Lastly, are you looking for something simply for internal use as a table/variable name or something that users would see (on screen and in documentation)? If the former, as long as you have adequate technical documentation for future developers/support staff, you could call it anything you like.
    – Roger Sinasohn
    Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 17:37
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Use the following to summarise “bills & expenses, and sources of income.”: revenue and expenditure

revenue
Revenue is money that a company, organization, or government receives from people.

expenditure
Expenditure is the spending of money on something, or the money that is spent on something.

The compound term, revenue expenditure, is used in businesses

revenue expenditure

the amount of money spent by a business or organization on general operating costs such as rent, insurance, heating, maintenance etc

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  • Hmm... Thanks, but it seems by that definition "revenue expenditure" refers to the amount of money, as opposed to the item (the bill, expense, source of salary, etc.) itself...?
    – DavidT
    Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 16:51

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