The purpose of this paper is to expound some approaches to the role of accounting in proposals for an alternative solidarity economy, which have been taking shape in popular organizations. To this end, a situation from the national and local economic context is taken. Then, the imbalance between theory and reality is analyzed in order to stress the need to give new meanings to categories according to socio-historical relevance. Therefore, accounting in an alternative solidarity economy becomes a proposal that takes shape in opposition to classical and neoclassical economic principles, as well as technical and instrumental concepts of accounting. Keywords: theory and reality, solidarity economy and alternative accounting.