[Discuss] Financial database / balance?

[jack at coats.org (Jack Coats)]

When I did mainframe bean counting in the last century, we basically
kept a database with the 'end of year' and each 'end of month' amounts
for each account, and a MTD (month to date) summery.  We kept the in
the month journal entries with each transaction so they could be
updated during the month (and that would be used to keep the MTD
amounts up to date.

When we closed out each month, we archived the previous months journal
entries.

On occasion we had to go back and back post journal entries, and
re-run end of month or end of year posts, and then re-process all
entries from that point forward.  That kind of processing was the
exception rather than the rule.

I did write 'audit' programs, to allow checking the amounts.  This
kind of program I found as pretty much 'required' because we were
consistently in a 'production maintenance' environment.

Yes, I understand abhoring anything but fully updated information, and
having to re-process old transactions.  But after supporting both tax
departments and general accounting (I stayed away from HR and payroll
like the plague -- different issues there), being ready to explain
your system and how you can validate it to auditors is a "good
thing"(tm).

The process wound up being basically the same as time has come
forward.  But instead of using VSAM or ISAM, we use SQL language
databases.  Instead of keeping tapes with journal entries, we kept
disks with 'flat files' or sequenced entries in SQL databases.  IMHO,
the tapes made more sense (especially with the automatic processing of
generation data groups ... but that is dating me even further back in
the dinosaur age).

I hopes this helps.