🎶 It's a Subledger 🎶

 James Brown - 20 All Time Greatest Hits: Red Vinyl 2LP - uDiscover

In the movie Get On Up, there’s a moment where James Brown stops rehearsal and walks through the band, calling out each musician one by one. He reminds them that no matter what they play—guitar, horns, bass, keys—their instrument is a drum.

He’s drilling his core philosophy into them:
every instrument in his band drives rhythm.
He wants the horns to punch like percussion, the guitar to play tight, clipped rhythmic patterns, and the bass to hit with strict precision. There’s no room for loose, melodic wandering. Brown treats the entire band like one giant rhythmic machine.

In Fintech, every system is a subledger.  Your lead engineer may not have designed it with accounting in mind.  They may have intentionally, avoided accounting concepts.  Nonetheless, if financial data flows through it, it's a subledger.  With rhythmic precision, at the end of each month its data will get aggregated and flow in the General Ledger.

James Brown says, "...God made your ears...not you."  In the case of accounting, it's not quite so divine but HAS been around for 7000 years.  If our system is partially an accounting system, as technologists we'd be wise to get educated on accounting and take advantage of its best practices.

 

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