{"head":{"title":"What Is a Ledger in Software? Definition | OceanLab","description":"A ledger is the record of every money movement in a system, kept so balances can always be explained. How software ledgers work, an example and mistakes.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/ledger"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"ledger","path":"/glossary/ledger"}],"slug":"ledger","term":"Ledger","aka":["general ledger","transaction ledger"],"category":"Payments and fintech","short":"The record of every movement of money in a system, kept so that any balance can be explained entry by entry.","body":[["In accounting, the general ledger holds a company's accounts and every transaction posted to them. In software, a ledger is the part of a product that records money movements, such as deposits, payments, fees, refunds and payouts, as entries against accounts."],["A good ledger is append-only. Entries are never edited or deleted; mistakes are fixed with new correcting entries. Balances are calculated from entries, not stored as a number someone can overwrite. Most use ",{"href":"/glossary/double-entry","text":"double entry"}," bookkeeping."]],"why":["Storing a balance column and updating it is the most common way fintech products lose track of money. A proper ledger makes every balance auditable, makes ",{"href":"/glossary/reconciliation","text":"reconciliation"}," possible, and survives retries and failures without double counting."],"example":["A wallet app records a EUR 20 top-up as a credit to the user's wallet account and a debit to the incoming funds account. A EUR 0.30 fee is a separate entry. When a user disputes their balance, support can list every entry that produced it."],"inBuild":["In a wallet, marketplace or banking build, the ledger is designed before the payment features, because every other money feature writes to it."],"mistakes":[["Updating a balance field in place instead of writing entries."],["Deleting or editing entries to fix mistakes."],["Using floating point numbers for money instead of integers or fixed-point decimals."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/double-entry","label":"Double-entry bookkeeping","detail":"Recording every transaction as equal debits and credits in at least two accounts, so the books always balance."},{"href":"/glossary/reconciliation","label":"Reconciliation","detail":"Checking that two records of the same money agree, such as your ledger and the bank or provider's statement, and explaining every difference."},{"href":"/glossary/settlement","label":"Settlement (payments)","detail":"The point when money for a payment actually moves into the receiver's account, after the payment was approved and cleared."},{"href":"/glossary/maker-checker","label":"Maker-checker (four-eyes principle)","detail":"A control where one person makes a change and a different person must approve it before it takes effect."}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/fintech-app-cost","label":"Fintech app cost","detail":"Free tool"},{"href":"/tools/core-banking-tco","label":"Core banking TCO","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/build/core-banking","label":"Building core banking","detail":"Ledgers, accounts and controls."},{"href":"/software/accounting","label":"Software for accounting","detail":"Ledgers, reconciliation and reporting systems."},{"href":"/software/banking","label":"Software for banking","detail":"Banking systems, controls and regulation."}],"sources":[],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}