Double-entry accounting
Definition
Double-entry accounting is a bookkeeping method in which every transaction is recorded as equal and opposite entries in at least two accounts, so total debits always equal total credits and errors surface as imbalance.
Double-entry rests on one identity: every transaction has two sides. Sell something and you gain cash (debit) while earning revenue (credit); buy inventory and you gain stock while losing cash or gaining a liability. Because both sides are recorded and must be equal, the books carry a built-in error detector — if total debits and total credits diverge, something is wrong, and the system can tell you so. The method has run essentially unchanged for five centuries because the invariant is that good.
Why it matters
Plenty of business software stores “financial” numbers as editable fields — an invoice total here, a balance there — with nothing forcing them to reconcile. That works until it doesn’t: numbers drift, an edit erases history, and at audit time nobody can explain how a balance came to be. Double-entry makes every balance the provable sum of its transactions. The question to ask any system holding your money data: is balance enforced — will it refuse an unbalanced write — or merely displayed?
How double-entry works in Oneop
Oneop’s finance module is a real double-entry general ledger, and the invariant is enforced twice: debits-equal-credits is checked in the application, and again by a PostgreSQL trigger that refuses to write an unbalanced entry at the database layer. Software bugs cannot corrupt the books past that trigger.
Immutability follows the same discipline. Posted entries are never edited away — a correction posts a linked mirror-image reversal, and the same entry cannot be reversed twice. Accounting periods close, and a closed period accepts no postings; an entry dated outside its own period is rejected rather than quietly filed in the wrong month. Every new workspace starts with a default chart of accounts, four journals, a fiscal year and twelve monthly periods, so nobody begins from a blank ledger.
Stated plainly: the ledger is there in every workspace — there is no accounting module to switch on. What varies is the plan. Invoicing is on every tier including Free; payables, expenses, tax and bank reconciliation start at Pro; multi-currency at Business.
Related terms: general ledger. Product page: Finance.
Related terms
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