You'd think that the solution to that confusion would be database transactions (commit everything or nothing), but there are exceptions. In ACH, sometimes you have to send out a lone credit or debit with no matching entry. It feels very wrong, but it's necessary because it balances out some other entry in another file (that you might not have access to.)

OTOH, once you have double-entry bookkeeping in your brain, you won't want to go back. I now feel that, from the perspective of a business or consumer, money is never created or destroyed, it only moves between accounts.