{"id":"concept:posting","kind":"concept","label":"Posting","synonyms":["posting to the ledger"],"definition":"Posting is the act of writing a balanced journal entry permanently into the ledger, after which the entry can never be edited or deleted, only reversed.","summary":"The moment an entry stops being a preview and becomes permanent. Posting happens when you categorize a bank transaction or confirm a manual entry — either way, the database checks the amounts balance and the period isn't locked before accepting it, and once accepted, it's there for good.","explanation":["Posting is the step where a journal entry stops being a proposal and becomes a permanent fact in the ledger. It happens two ways in BalanceMCP: automatically, the moment a bank transaction is categorized, or directly, when a manual entry is confirmed. Either way, the same checks apply — the lines must balance to exactly zero, every account named must exist and be active, and the entry's date can't fall inside an already-locked period.","Before anything posts, BalanceMCP shows a preview of exactly what would be written — which accounts, which amounts, on which side — and nothing changes until that preview is explicitly confirmed. That preview runs in a separate pass from the actual write, so it's a snapshot of what would happen at that moment, not a lock on it; an account archived in the gap between preview and confirm can still cause the confirm to fail even though the preview looked clean.","Once posting succeeds, the entry is permanent. There's no edit button and no delete, by design — the journal is append-only, enforced by the database itself rather than merely by the application's interface, so it holds even against a write that tries to bypass the app entirely. A mistake discovered after posting is corrected with a reversing entry, which adds a new, visible correction rather than touching the original.","This is different from just entering data into a spreadsheet cell. A spreadsheet has no memory of what a cell used to say once it's overwritten; posting a journal entry adds a new, permanent fact to an ordered history instead of overwriting one, which is what makes the ledger trustworthy as a record months or years later."],"commonMistakes":["Assuming a preview has already posted — nothing is written until the preview is explicitly confirmed.","Expecting to edit something after it's posted — the only path is a reversing entry, never a direct edit.","Assuming a clean preview guarantees a clean confirm — the two run in separate passes, and something can change in between (like an account being archived)."],"category":"fundamentals","questions":[{"question":"Can a posted entry ever be edited?","answer":"No — the journal is append-only, enforced at the database level. The only way to correct a posted entry is a reversing entry, which adds a new correction rather than changing the original."},{"question":"Why did my post fail after the preview looked fine?","answer":"The preview and the actual write run as separate passes. If an account named in the entry was archived in between, the confirm step catches that even though the preview didn't."}],"url":"/glossary/posting","relatedTo":[{"id":"concept:journal-entry","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Ajournal-entry"},{"id":"concept:categorization","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Acategorization"},{"id":"concept:dry-run","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Adry-run"},{"id":"concept:reversing-entry","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Areversing-entry"},{"id":"concept:period-lock","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aperiod-lock"},{"id":"concept:audit-trail","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aaudit-trail"},{"id":"tool:post_journal_entry","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/tool%3Apost_journal_entry"},{"id":"tool:categorize_transactions","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/tool%3Acategorize_transactions"}],"referencedBy":[{"id":"concept:journal-entry","label":"Journal Entry","url":"/glossary/journal-entry"},{"id":"concept:general-ledger","label":"General Ledger","url":"/glossary/general-ledger"},{"id":"concept:audit-trail","label":"Audit Trail","url":"/glossary/audit-trail"},{"id":"concept:dry-run","label":"Dry Run","url":"/glossary/dry-run"}],"license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","attribution":"BalanceMCP — https://balancemcp.com"}