A reference architecture for traceable accounting events, approval history, reconciliation evidence, and controlled exports.
Reference blueprint
Share selected accounting events without replacing accounting authority.
A reference architecture for traceable accounting events, approval history, reconciliation evidence, and controlled exports.
Reference architectureNot a deployed serviceValidation required
Reduce selected reconciliation gaps across systems while keeping economic substance, accounting treatment, completeness, and auditor acceptance outside the ledger.
Illustrative architecture. Production suitability must be established for the target environment.
Operating flow
Follow the decision path, not a feature list.
Each stage needs a named actor, an authoritative input, a control decision, and evidence of the resulting state.
Capture
An approved source system submits a business event.
Validate
Identity, schema, completeness, and duplicate checks run.
Approve
Configured roles review the proposed accounting event.
Record
The event and approval history become tamper-evident.
Reconcile
Finance systems consume, correct, and report the selected record.
Actors
Accountability attaches to roles.
The blueprint coordinates participants; it does not transfer every participant’s obligations to the technology provider.
Source-system owner
Provides authorised business and financial events
Finance operations
Reviews mappings, exceptions, and reconciliations
Controller or approver
Authorises in-scope entries and corrections
Auditor
Assesses evidence within an accepted trust boundary
Integration operator
Runs data exchange and operational controls
Controlled workflowRoles connect through explicit permissions, approvals, and evidence.
Controlled boundary
Be precise about what the architecture can prove.
A recorded event can be inspectable and tamper-evident while its source, legal effect, market outcome, or physical truth remains externally governed.
What the blueprint can govern
- Schema and mapping for selected accounting events
- Identity, approval, and segregation-of-duty rules
- Tamper-evident entry and correction history
- Reconciliation views and controlled exports
What the blueprint does not establish
- Accuracy and completeness of source-system data
- Economic substance and applicable accounting treatment
- Financial-statement preparation and books-and-records obligations
- Auditor procedures, judgement, and acceptance
Design inputs
Name the assumptions and dependencies before selecting components.
A
Before design
Assumptions to make explicit
- Authoritative source systems and event owners are named.
- Chart-of-account and data mappings are versioned and approved.
- Correction, reversal, retention, and close procedures are defined.
- Every approving role is tied to a governed enterprise identity.
D
Across the system
Dependencies to diligence
- ERP and accounting systems
- Bank, invoice, and third-party data interfaces
- Identity and approval services
- Ledger and smart-contract components
- Reporting, archive, and audit tooling
Diligence path
Turn failure modes into validation gates.
The target design should not proceed on architecture diagrams alone. Each material risk needs an owner, test, evidence source, and acceptance decision.
Risk map
Incorrect source data becoming persistently recorded
Duplicate, missing, or misclassified events
Segregation-of-duty or administrator-control failure
Privacy or retention conflicts across participants
Ledger and general-ledger reconciliation drift
Validation gates
- 01
Reconcile representative event totals to authoritative systems.
- 02
Test approvals, rejected events, reversals, and period corrections.
- 03
Verify completeness and duplicate detection across failure modes.
- 04
Exercise access, export, retention, and recovery procedures.
- 05
Obtain finance, accounting-policy, legal, and auditor review.
Reference architecture is not production approval.
The blueprint does not certify a product, validate source data, establish legal or regulatory treatment, or guarantee security, interoperability, performance, availability, cost, liquidity, or adoption.
Validate the blueprint
Test the accounting ledger operating model against a real environment.
Use a workshop to map roles, source systems, controls, failure modes, evidence, and open decisions. Any production scope follows separate technical, legal, and commercial review.