Keeping track of personal debt

What’s the best way to track personal debt—whether I owe my friend or my friend owes me—and have it reflected in the balance sheet to easily keep track of it? Let’s say these transactions are old and they don’t appear in my transactions sheet.

You can just create a manual liability/debt account for each person owed or a single account that includes the cumulative total for everyone owed, then add manual transactions as you pay it off.

Thank you. Does adding manual transaction update the balance of the manual account or I have to do that separately?

It sounds like both are updated independently.