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Accounting Effects
Accounting Effects is the surface that answers the question, “What did this document do?”
For a posted document, the platform should be able to expose:
- ledger entries;
- debit and credit impact;
- operational or reference side effects when relevant;
- related statuses and explainability context.
Why accounting effects deserve a separate page
Document Flow and Accounting Effects are related, but they answer different questions.
- Document Flow explains how documents relate to each other.
- Accounting Effects explains what a document produced in accounting or registers.
That distinction is important both for users and for system design.
Why effects visibility matters
A production system should not force users to infer posting results from database tables or hidden implementation details.
Effects should be inspectable so that finance, support, and engineering teams can confirm:
- which entries were created;
- why balances changed;
- which document caused the change;
- whether related operational or reference movements also happened.
Effects and explainability
Accounting Effects is one of the core explainability surfaces in NGB.
Together with status, audit history, and document flow, it helps users trust the platform’s business behavior.
Typical design rules
When exposing accounting effects, the system should preserve:
- clear linkage back to the source document;
- durable historical view rather than mutable side notes;
- readable debit and credit presentation;
- consistent naming and ordering across document types.
When to use this surface
Users reach for accounting effects when they need to understand consequences, not lineage.
That makes it especially important for:
- posted commercial documents;
- corrections and reversals;
- period-close-related documents;
- support and reconciliation work.