Hi Don,

I have written a GL system from scratch and have modified it over the last ten years. The nagging concern you will run into is keeping things "in balance". Basically that means that the total of the debits always equals the total of the credits.

I don't mean to be simplistic, but my first design used a JV header record which contained the date and a description of the journal entry. The detail records contained the header ID plus an account_ID and two numeric fields, one for debit amount and one for credit amount. In each of the detail records, only one of the numeric fields was used. So every journal entry must have at least two detail records. In this design you must be very careful and be sure to use transaction processing because it is easy to get "out of balance".

I could go into a lot more detail if you want, but suffice it to say that my latest design is simpler. There is no header record. Instead, the financial transaction records have one numeric field and two account fields (debit account and credit account). In this design it is virtually impossible to be out of balance providing both account codes are valid and present. This is not the classic design an accountant would develop but, as others have said, under the hood does not matter if the results are there.

Let me know if you want more details.

Hope this helps,

Ken









>I have a need to design a general ledger system from scratch. I've been searching for examples on the internet.
>
>I see that some systems use two separate columns: one for DEBIT and one for CREDIT amounts, and others use one "Amount" column with a plus or minus amount.
>
>I know all the manual systems use debit-credit columns, but is this the way I should actually go with a computerized system?
>
>Can any of you with experience in this area make a recommendation on the better way to go? Any advice?
>
>TIA!