Ledger Methodology

Clear categories before clear totals.

A public account is useful only if its categories, limits, corrections, and unknowns can be understood without guessing. This page explains the method used for the initial debit register and the limits that remain attached to it.

Money and currencies

Any future amount must use minor units, not binary floating point.

Original amount: A future record would retain its original currency code and integer minor-unit amount.
Reporting amount: Where a future period uses a reporting currency, it would record the converted minor-unit amount, rate, rate date, source, and whether the conversion is estimated or actual.
Closed periods: If a period is ever closed, its reviewed public snapshot and conversion values should be preserved. A later correction should be appended, not silently rewritten.
Unknowns: Zero, not reported, not applicable, pending, and estimated are distinct states. A missing number is never displayed as zero.

Future resources would not be expenditure, and transfers would not be revenue.

Resources received

Earned revenue, such as a service fee or licence revenue.
Founder contributions, recorded apart from earned revenue.
External support, never labelled a donation while donations are not accepted.
In-kind support, recorded separately from cash totals.
Refunds and rebates, linked to the affected expenditure where possible.

Expenditure and allocation

Infrastructure, bandwidth, hosting, storage, domains, software, security, and other direct or shared costs.
Project allocations that reconcile exactly to the source amount, with explicit rounding only where needed.
Internal transfers excluded from resources and revenue.
Miscellaneous expenditure explained rather than used as a hiding place.

Deficits and access support

A future founder payment would be visible support, not retroactive profit.

A future founder-funded deficit would be calculated as eligible expenditure less earned revenue and eligible external support. The record would separately report the operating deficit, founder contribution, and any remaining uncovered balance.

Goodwill Access: Report standard service value, recipient contribution, actual direct cost, and foregone revenue separately. Foregone retail revenue is not automatically expenditure.
In-kind support: Record provider, description, valuation method, usable value, period, restrictions, and independent-checkability where publication is appropriate. Operational totals use consumed value, not an unused credit ceiling.
Corrections: Publish a stable public reference, correction date, reason suitable for publication, affected period, and replacement or restatement link. Private evidence and internal notes stay private.

Publication and privacy

Public detail follows review, redaction, and delay.

Any future near-current summary would require review before publication. Transaction detail would require a separately approved delay and redaction policy; sensitive infrastructure could be aggregated. Public output would never include account access, credentials, topology, personal contact data, applicant data, correspondence, or unpublished contracts.