A real ledger, not a list of transactions

An entry that is out by a penny is refused. It is never quietly balanced into a suspense account to be dealt with later, because later is a year-end where somebody is looking at a number nobody can explain.

A wrong entry is corrected by a reversing entry, and both stay. That is the whole reason a ledger is trusted: the version that can be quietly rewritten at nine in the evening is worth exactly nothing to an accountant, an auditor or a bank.

It is the one number that proves the rest. Shown prominently rather than buried, and shown loudly on the day it does not.

Accounts that would hold funds belonging to somebody else — a deposit held in trust, a retainer — are marked and refused rather than quietly posted to. Holding client money properly means segregated accounts, per-client sub-ledgers and reconciliation duties, and three quarters of that machinery with none of its controls is worse than not offering it.