Double-entry - 3Rings

3Rings keeps double-entry books: every journal is made of lines that are either a debit or a credit, and the total debits must equal the total credits. This is what makes the books provably correct — and it is enforced on our side, not yours.

A journal

A journal groups the lines of a single economic event. Paying ₦250,000 of office rent in cash is one journal with two lines:

Line	Account	Debit	Credit
1	Office Rent (expense)	25000000
2	Cash (asset)		25000000
	Total	25000000	25000000

{
  "businessId": "biz_9f2",
  "narration": "Office rent — November",
  "currency": "NGN",
  "entries": [
    { "type": "debit",  "accountId": "acc_rent", "amount": 25000000 },
    { "type": "credit", "accountId": "acc_cash", "amount": 25000000 }
  ]
}

Balancing is authoritative

When you POST /v1/journals, we check that debits equal credits before posting. An unbalanced journal is rejected with 422 and never reaches the ledger:

{
  "error": {
    "type": "unbalanced_journal",
    "message": "Debits (25000000) do not equal credits (24000000).",
    "code": "journal.unbalanced"
  }
}

A journal can have more than two lines — a compound journal — as long as the totals balance.

Amounts

All amounts are integers in the currency’s minor unit (kobo for NGN, cents for USD) and always positive; the type (debit/credit) carries the direction. Using integers avoids floating-point rounding errors in the ledger.