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This sounds like something I'd be interested in learning more about. Do you have a couple examples of said data reconciliation issues, and the corresponding acc

This sounds like something I'd be interested in learning more about. Do you have a couple examples of said data reconciliation issues, and the corresponding accounting approaches?

john61 5y ago
Not the OP. But in my experience, a lot of people do not know about double entry bookkeeping, which solves a lot of problems people have trying a home made excel bookkeeping. It is not more work to do, but you have to learn a little bit about the concepts. Once you know them, it seems incomprehensible that others make errors that have been solved hundreds of years ago.
jimnotgym 5y ago
An easy example. In a well designed database that represents an accounting ledger, debits are positive numbers credits are negative. With double entry accounting, if everything is correct the entire ledger sums to zero at all times. It is trivial therefore to know if an error crept in to your system, maybe something posted only half the entry before erroring (btw always post a complete double entry inside a database transaction).
- dugmartin 5y ago
  You can also design your schema using unified ledger accounting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_ledger_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_ledger_accounting) which captures both the transaction's debit and credit in a single row in a single table negating the need for a transaction.
  - jimnotgym 5y ago
    The problem comes with trying to quickly find the balance of sub-accounts. It is common to need to find the balance of all of the general ledger accounts repeatedly and quickly when preparing accounts, or having to find all customer balances to see who has paid. Once you have 10m rows of data (easily done at an sme) this gets very slow indeed. It is common to have a second table that records running balances or balances at period ends to speed this up. This is why transactions are important or you find the individual accounts of the sales ledger control don't add up to the total. Some systems have an 'audit' tool that adds them all back up from the general ledger.
- cheradenine_uk 5y ago
  If you're interested, you can always check out the code to GNUcash; IIRC it has a SQL Schema that can be imported into most databases. https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/SQL https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/SQL
- augiemagic 5y ago
  Ah that makes sense. Thanks!

This sounds like something I'd be interested in learning more about. Do you have a couple examples of said data reconciliation issues, and the corresponding accounting approaches?

john61 5y ago

Not the OP. But in my experience, a lot of people do not know about double entry bookkeeping, which solves a lot of problems people have trying a home made excel bookkeeping. It is not more work to do, but you have to learn a little bit about the concepts. Once you know them, it seems incomprehensible that others make errors that have been solved hundreds of years ago.

jimnotgym 5y ago

An easy example. In a well designed database that represents an accounting ledger, debits are positive numbers credits are negative. With double entry accounting, if everything is correct the entire ledger sums to zero at all times. It is trivial therefore to know if an error crept in to your system, maybe something posted only half the entry before erroring (btw always post a complete double entry inside a database transaction).

dugmartin 5y ago
You can also design your schema using unified ledger accounting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_ledger_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_ledger_accounting) which captures both the transaction's debit and credit in a single row in a single table negating the need for a transaction.
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  The problem comes with trying to quickly find the balance of sub-accounts. It is common to need to find the balance of all of the general ledger accounts repeatedly and quickly when preparing accounts, or having to find all customer balances to see who has paid. Once you have 10m rows of data (easily done at an sme) this gets very slow indeed. It is common to have a second table that records running balances or balances at period ends to speed this up. This is why transactions are important or you find the individual accounts of the sales ledger control don't add up to the total. Some systems have an 'audit' tool that adds them all back up from the general ledger.
cheradenine_uk 5y ago
If you're interested, you can always check out the code to GNUcash; IIRC it has a SQL Schema that can be imported into most databases. https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/SQL https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/SQL
augiemagic 5y ago
Ah that makes sense. Thanks!