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Ledger, settlement and reconciliation

Status: Proposed control design; validate actual legal account structure and accounting entries with the regulated partner and qualified advisers.

Source of truth​

The internal double-entry ledger records Sparelane's operational view of money movement. The regulated partner's statements and bank balances are independent evidence. Neither system should be treated as proof of the other without reconciliation.

Account categories​

  • Partner funds clearing and safeguarded collection balance
  • Merchant payable, split by merchant and currency
  • Unsettled/receivable funds where applicable
  • Payouts in transit
  • Refund and dispute liabilities
  • Processing fees payable and Sparelane revenue/receivables

Important: These are logical ledger categories, not assertions that Sparelane legally owns or controls customer funds. Final postings depend on custody agreements and accounting treatment.

Posting rules​

Each financial event produces a uniquely keyed, balanced set of debit/credit entries within one atomic database transaction. Corrections use reversal and replacement entries; posted records are not edited. Enforce sum(debits) = sum(credits) per currency. Ledger balances should be derivable from entries.

Payout controls​

A merchant payout can include only funds confirmed as eligible, less any properly reserved amounts. Lock or atomically reserve individual collection allocations so two payout jobs cannot use the same funds. Store partner payout ID, bank destination version, amount, currency, status and per-bill breakdown. A payout instruction accepted by the API is not necessarily completed.

Reconciliation cadence​

  • Continuous: deduplicate webhooks; compare expected state changes with provider events.
  • Daily: reconcile transaction-level settlements, reversals, charges and payout instructions to provider files.
  • Daily: reconcile safeguarded account totals and merchant payable subledger to external balances.
  • Monthly: reconcile merchant fee assessments, invoices, tax and accounting exports.
  • On exception: create owned case records with aging, root cause, evidence and resolution entries.

Critical exceptions​

Unknown provider outcome; partial settlement; duplicate webhook; chargeback after merchant payout; refund after payout; payout rejection; stale payout account; reserve shortfall; reconciliation mismatch; partner outage.

Do not auto-resolve unexplained variances by adjusting balances. Require investigation, approval and auditable correction.