Financial Ledger

Purpose

The authoritative internal record of every financial movement — what an accountant or auditor would actually look at.

What It Is

Effectively the union of sales, commissions, platform_fees, and payouts tables (03. Database), read in sequence, plus the Audit Log (03. Database → Audit Log Design) for any manual adjustments (refund clawbacks, Admin overrides).

Principle

Every dollar that enters SellVia (via a Sale) must be traceable to exactly where it went: creator commission, merchant share, or platform fee — with no unaccounted difference. This ledger view is what makes that traceable, rather than having to reconstruct it ad hoc from raw tables during a dispute.

Reconciliation Against Paddle

See Reconciliation (below) for how this internal ledger is checked against Paddle's own records, which are the ultimate source of truth for actual money movement.

Open Questions

Whether a dedicated ledger_entries table (double-entry style: every transaction recorded as a debit and credit) is worth building for MVP, or whether deriving the ledger view from existing tables is sufficient — double-entry is more rigorous but more engineering effort; reasonable to defer true double-entry bookkeeping until transaction volume justifies it, as long as Reconciliation (below) catches discrepancies in the meantime

Update (2026-08-07): Ledger Now Spans Billing Cycles, Not Live Splits

The ledger's job changed: it previously traced a Paddle split at time of sale; now it traces a Sale → its BillingCycle → the charge that collected it → the payout that distributed it. Every dollar's path is longer (more steps) but each step is independently auditable — the union of sales, billing_cycles, commissions, platform_fees, and payouts (03. Table Specifications, revised 2026-08-07).

Update (2026-08-23): Paddle Removed, Swich Confirmed

Founder decisions, full reasoning in 02. Architecture Decision Log. "Reconciliation Against Paddle" above means Swich now — same principle (Swich's own transaction records are the ultimate source of truth for actual money movement, since that's the system that actually executes the transfer). Currency is PKR only. See 05. Reconciliation (updated same date) for the mechanics.