Does anyone have a good explanation for why a ledger database should care about credits and debits and normal balances? This has always seemed more natural to me as a front-end / presentation layer concept. Your ledger entries always sum to zero for each transaction, your income account has a negative balance, and you display it in a sensible manner.
I’m also surprised that this whole article starts by discussing stock trading but has no mention of how to represent stock trades. I assume they are “Sagas” consisting of money moving from the customer to the clearinghouse (or prime broker or PFOF provider or whatever) and shares moving from that provider to the account at which the shares are held. And maybe other associated entries representing fees? It seems to me that this is multi-entry accounting, which is quite common, and that entries don’t actually come in pairs as the article would like us to think.
I’m also surprised that this whole article starts by discussing stock trading but has no mention of how to represent stock trades. I assume they are “Sagas” consisting of money moving from the customer to the clearinghouse (or prime broker or PFOF provider or whatever) and shares moving from that provider to the account at which the shares are held. And maybe other associated entries representing fees? It seems to me that this is multi-entry accounting, which is quite common, and that entries don’t actually come in pairs as the article would like us to think.