What do the value colors mean?

Question

My Quicken account registers and reports display financial values in either the color black or the color red. While the column titles suggest which is which, I can’t seem to locate a community page that, with certainty, confirms which color represents “income” and which represents “expense” (and, of course, their cousins “credit” and debit” and “asset and liability” etc.) Can these colors be changed in settings? Is that a bad or good idea to alter the colors? Is the black and red color the “default” color?

GeoffG · Accepted Answer

The font colors cannot be changed. Black is the default color for all but liability accounts. You can change the color of the register backgrounds under preferences.

Chris_QPW · Accepted Answer

Black -> positive number
Red -> negative number

But it isn't 100% that a positive number in Quicken represents income.
If you look at a credit card account you will see that both the Charge and the Payment columns are entered as positive/black numbers.  That is because the column it is in gives it the "sign".  On the other hand if you look at the Amount column it will show positive and negative numbers which in general are income and expense.  But even there, there is an exception, transfers.  A transfer is neither an income or an expense.  The sign/color only represents the direction of the transfer (in or out).