Accounting for Developers

Are you a developer interested in how double entry accounting works or are you tasked with building a double entry accounting system? Are you an accountant wondering how double entry accounting ledgers are implemented in practice?

This is a three part blog series going into detail. We will cover some aspects of the technical implementation of ledgers quite deeply.

This guide is written from the perspective of a software engineer and we will cover basic implementation details and discuss some of the complexity with implementing an immutable accounting ledger that offers guarantees of correctness.

Here are the topics we will cover

• Prelude: Fundamentals of Double Entry Accounting
  What is Double Entry Accounting?
  The Accounting Equation
  Account Types: Debit Normal vs Credit Normal
  Transactions and Entries
  Debits and Credits: More Than Just Additions and Subtractions
• Part 1 - Implementing a Double Entry Accounting System
  A Data Model
  Immutable Transactions vs Mutable Balances
  Data Integrity and Consistency
  Implementing Account Types and Entry Rules
  Balance Calculation and Reporting
• Part 2 - Advanced Topics and Edge Cases
  Multi-Currency Transactions
  Rounding and Precision Issues
  Audit Trails and Version Control
  Performance Optimization for Large-Scale Systems
  Compliance and Regulatory Considerations