Build Financial Controls Into the System

Policies and training matter. The strongest accounting workflows also make invalid actions unavailable in the software itself.

Training and policy matter. Software can support them by applying accounting controls while people do the work.

Concretely, that means:

Segregation of duties at the command layer. Reversal commands are available to roles with permission, regardless of which client sends the request.
An append-only event store. Posted entries remain in history, and corrections appear as new reversing entries with their own attribution.
Write-time balance validation. The ledger rejects an unbalanced entry before posting it.

These are current behaviors in LedgerWriter’s core ledger domain. See how the event-sourcing model works and how the controls relate to selected SOX and GAAP considerations on the developer page.

The principle is simple: controls are easier to rely on when the system enforces them during the work.