This standard governs the books of All About Pawz, LLC: the chart of accounts, the journal, and the general ledger: the formal accounting record into which every operational event in this section must eventually be posted. Invoices, payments, refunds, and payroll are operational events; the books are where those events become accounting. The Accounting Operator posts and investigates entries; the Accounting Manager owns the chart of accounts, period closing, and every correction to a posted entry. If an event is not in the journal, it has not happened for the purposes of the financial statements.
How money reaches the books
Every automated posting passes through one journal-posting function, called by the payment webhook for shop sales and booking deposits, by the finance actions for refunds, deposits, and gift cards, and by the same pattern at the register. The function enforces the following before anything is recorded, and each rule is a hard stop, not a warning
- Total debits shall equal total credits to the cent, or the posting is rejected.
- An empty posting is rejected.
- Every account code shall resolve to an active account in the tenant's chart of accounts.
- An accounting entity shall exist for the tenant, or nothing posts for that tenant at all.
The function then assembles the context itself: the tenant's accounting entity, the main book (accrual basis, United States dollars), the fiscal year and the current month's period (left open), and a batch for the posting run. The entry number is assigned by the system and never by a caller; it is the permanent identifier cited in every later inquiry about the entry. Automated postings go directly to posted state.
Warning
When a posting fails, the operational event still happened: the processor holds the money, the order is paid, the operational records exist. What is missing is the journal entry, and nothing retries the posting on its own. The books are behind reality until an operator recovers the entry by hand under Troubleshooting (Accounting Troubleshooting).
Chart of accounts
The chart of accounts is the vocabulary of the books. Each account carries a code, a name, a type, and a normal balance. The accounts used most in daily work are
| Code | Account | Type | What posts here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | Cash | Asset | Cash drawer receipts, manual cash payments, deposit collections, gift card issuance |
| 1010 | Checking | Asset | Card payments: processor settlements land here, not in cash |
| 1200 | Accounts Receivable | Asset | Invoice balances owed by customers |
| 1400 | Inventory | Asset | Relieved when cost of goods sold is recognized |
| 2200 | Sales Tax Payable | Liability | Tax collected at sale, owed to the jurisdiction |
| 2300 | Customer Deposits | Liability | Booking deposits held: not revenue until earned |
| 2310 | Gift Card Liability | Liability | Unredeemed gift card balances |
| 4000 | Revenue | Revenue | Sales, forfeited deposits, gift card redemptions |
| 4900 | Sales Discounts | Revenue (contra) | Discounts, kept separate so gross revenue stays visible |
| 5000 | Cost of Goods Sold | Expense | Matched against inventory relief on each sale |
Three flags on each account control behavior
- Posting allowed. Control accounts accept postings only from their own detailed records, never manually; that restriction is what keeps the detail and the books in agreement.
- Reconcilable. The account shall be reconciled to an external statement, as bank and card-clearing accounts are, under Banking.
- System. The Platform created the account and automated processes depend on it. A system account shall not be renamed or deactivated.
Adding an account is deliberate. The Accounting Manager codes it inside the existing numbering scheme, sets the type and normal balance, and writes a description that distinguishes it from its neighbours. Before deactivating any account, the Accounting Manager confirms what posts to it; deactivating an account that automated postings use breaks those postings.
Journal entries, batches, and periods
A journal entry is a balanced set of debit and credit lines under a header carrying the entry number, the entry date and posting date, the source and source identifier tracing the entry back to the originating document, a reference, a memo, and the debit and credit totals. When something looks wrong in the books, the operator follows the source reference; the operator does not edit the books.
- New manual entries begin unposted; automated postings post directly.
- A posted entry records who posted it and when.
- Batches group the entries from one source: a payroll run, a bank import, a night's processor postings.
- Periods are monthly. The posting function opens the current month's period where none exists. The Accounting Manager closes a period when the month's books are final.
- For foreign-currency activity, entries carry the currency and exchange rate, and lines carry the transaction-currency amounts alongside the converted amounts. Where a foreign-currency invoice looks wrong, check the rate on the line before questioning the total.
The general ledger
The ledger is every posted debit and credit organized by account, and it is the source from which every financial report in Reports is drawn. The ledger report returns line detail with a running balance per account, ordered by account, then date, then entry.
- To answer what happened in an account in a period, filter by account and date range.
- To answer why a balance is what it is, read the lines in date order; each line's memo and source reference shall explain itself.
- A line with an empty memo and no source reference is a defect to correct at the source record, not in the ledger.
The ledger contains posted entries only. Unposted invoices and pending payments remain in their operational records until they post. Where the dashboard and the ledger disagree, the question is always which operational events have not posted yet: not whether the ledger is wrong. See Accounting Dashboard.
Controls
- A posted entry shall never be edited. A correction is made by a reversing entry linked to the original, followed where needed by the corrected entry. The entries together are the record of what was believed true at each point, mistakes included.
- No entry shall be posted into a closed period. An event belonging to a closed period is corrected by a reversing or correcting entry in the open period that follows it, with a memo naming the period it belongs to.
- Separation of duties: the person who records a payment does not reconcile it, and the person who posts a manual entry does not approve the close of the period it lands in.
- Banking credentials are never recorded in a journal memo, a batch name, or any other field of the books, and are never shared between operators. Access to banking is governed by Banking.
Records created and where they are kept
This standard creates journal entries, batches, periods, and ledger history, all kept in the accounting system as the Company's formal books. They are retained under the Regulatory Record Retention Policy and are the records produced for any audit, tax examination, or legal process.
Escalation
A posting rejected for a missing accounting entity, an imbalance that cannot be traced to its source record, or any request to alter a posted entry goes to the Accounting Manager the same day. Operational failures that prevent posting go to support@aapawz.com. Legal process touching the books goes to legal@aapawz.com on the day it is received.
Review cadence
The Accounting Manager reviews the chart of accounts quarterly, closes each monthly period after the close checklist in Troubleshooting (Accounting Troubleshooting) is complete, and reviews this standard annually.
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