Posting
In accounting, posting means committing an entry to the ledger, making it immutable.
- Layer
- Lexicon
- Defined in
- Lexicon
- Components
- 1
Not a rule
Bookkeeping convention — not codified. US GAAP governs recognition, measurement and presentation — not the mechanics a bookkeeper uses to get there. Anyone citing a standard for this word is citing the wrong thing.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
The lessons that teach this
Accounting, 0 to 1 — a free course taught end to end on one month of one company, with the spreadsheet exercises to work it yourself.
- 05Recording the monthThirteen things happened to Northwind in September. Here is every one of them turned into an entry, with the reasoning that produced it.13 min
- 06Posting to the ledgerThe journal is in date order; the ledger is in account order. Posting is the re-sort, and it is what turns a list of events into a balance you can report.8 min
- 13Closing the monthStatements are not the end. The close proves every balance against something outside the ledger, then locks the period so the numbers can't quietly change.13 min
Posting, in use
Quoted from the 8 documents that use the word — what it does to an interface, in the spec's own sentence.
Everything posting is a row in one transaction table with a type discriminator, plus sublists.
Lopifi APIs: Xero, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite — The mental model of each
Blocks posting into a closed period with the cutoff explanation, not a bare rejection.
The UI consequence: an AccountPicker groups by type and sub-classification, shows the account number, and shows the normal balance — because a user posting to an unfamiliar account needs to know which side increases it.
For founders
The same idea written for a founder: what it costs a startup that ignores it, and what to do in a real month.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
- saving
- submitting
Components that render this
The concept is not documentation-only. These are the components that name it in their specification, grouped and stated exactly as the catalog states them.
9Accounting core (GL)
Family specAlso in Core ledger
Work with this concept
The calculators that compute it and the ledger payloads that carry it. A definition is where a reader starts; these are where they go next.
- Journal entry balancerPaste an entry, see the out-of-balance, and copy an import-ready CSV.Tool
- Journals and the general ledgerCan you get the actual general ledger out?API
- Periods, locking and the closeWhat stops someone posting into a closed month?API
- Writes, concurrency and rate limitsWhat happens when you write, and how fast can you go?API
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.