What is the Ledger?

The ledger is Play Money's internal double-entry accounting system. It tracks every financial transaction that occurs within each SPV -- investor payments, commitment adjustments, fee charges, distributions, refunds, and returns -- providing a complete, auditable financial record.

Why the Ledger Exists

Before the ledger, financial tracking relied on payment order records and manual reconciliation. The ledger adds a structured accounting layer that ensures:

• Every transaction is balanced -- money always comes from somewhere and goes somewhere. If the numbers don't add up, the system rejects the entry.
• Nothing is ever deleted or modified -- ledger entries are immutable. If a mistake is made, it's corrected with a new reversing entry, preserving the full history.
• Account balances are always derivable -- you can reconstruct any account's balance at any point in time by replaying the entries. Cached balances exist for performance but are never the source of truth.

How It Relates to What You Already Know

The ledger works alongside the existing payment and investment systems you're already familiar with:

• When a payment order completes, the ledger automatically records where the money went (into the SPV's cash account, reducing the investor's receivable).
• When an investment is committed, the ledger records the obligation (how much the investor owes and their economic interest in the SPV).
• When an amount is adjusted (e.g., wire fee shortfall), the ledger records the change to both the receivable and the capital accounts.
• When a payment is returned (ACH return), the ledger automatically creates a reversing entry that undoes the original payment's accounting impact.

What You Don't Need to Do

The ledger is entirely automatic. As an admin, you don't need to create ledger entries manually -- they are generated by the system whenever money moves or commitments change. Your existing workflows (adjusting amounts, processing refunds, reconciling wires) remain exactly the same. The ledger simply records the accounting impact behind the scenes.

If you want to understand the financial position of an SPV or see the accounting trail for a specific investment, the ledger provides that visibility through journal entries and account balances in the admin panel.

Key Terms

• Journal Entry -- a single accounting transaction that groups two or more balanced lines (debits and credits). Every financial event creates one journal entry.
• Ledger Account -- a named bucket that holds a running balance. Each SPV has its own set of accounts (cash, receivables, capital, etc.).
• Debit / Credit -- the two sides of every entry. In double-entry accounting, every journal entry has equal debits and credits. See How the Ledger Works for a plain-language explanation.

Further Reading

• How the Ledger Works -- a plain-language explanation of double-entry accounting as it applies to Play Money.
• Chart of Accounts -- the full list of account types and what each one represents.