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Last amended: 2026-08-12 Audience: product, accounting, developer Supersedes: ADR 0018

ADR 0020: Initial Release Scope and Financial Workflow Taxonomy

Context

BooksPlus needs one decision that defines the BP3 initial release scope, keeps the product from becoming an operational ERP before the accounting kernel is stable, and provides a workflow taxonomy that can grow without implying every named area is implemented now.

ADR 0018 established the initial release scope and development sequence. This ADR incorporates that release-scope decision, adds the workflow family taxonomy, and makes active, planned, and deferred workflow status explicit.

Decision

The internal release name is BP3.

The public initial release is BooksPlus 1.0 unless external product-continuity or migration reasons later require a different public version label.

BP3 is an accounting control, close, reporting, and evidence system. It is not the first operational sales, purchasing, banking, payment, payroll, tax, budgeting, funding, capex, compliance, or perpetual-inventory system.

BooksPlus organizes financial work under four workflow families:

  • Financial Control;
  • Operating Transaction Capture;
  • Close Processing;
  • Correction & Conversion Controls.

The taxonomy organizes user navigation, documentation, and planning language. It does not move canonical domain ownership:

  • Accounting owns posting and ledger truth.
  • Close owns close runs, waivers, approvals, and close-driven period transitions.
  • Source Documents owns evidence identity, references, and supersession.
  • Security and Audit own protected actions, authorization, and audit evidence.
  • Summary Accounting remains workflow staging and review state, not formal report truth.

No domain object, persistence value, protected action, journal-entry behavior, financial-period behavior, source-document behavior, summary-batch status, or reporting basis changes because of this taxonomy.

This ADR supersedes ADR 0018 as the initial release scope and workflow-sequencing decision.

Initial release workflow scope

The active initial release workflow areas are:

Workflow area Family placement Initial release meaning Explicitly deferred
Setup & Onboarding Financial Control; opening balances also belong under Correction & Conversion Controls Organize responsibilities, policy defaults, company setup, fiscal periods, chart, opening balances, permissions, and support practices. This is the complete entry path for a startup scenario with no existing accounting system. Full implementation-services practice management.
Current Period Workbench Operating and exception review surface across Operating Transaction Capture, Close Processing, and Correction & Conversion Controls Review source documents, manual entries, exceptions, posting readiness, summary batches, and posted activity in the current open period. Treating daily cadence as its own accounting domain.
Sales and Receivables Summary Operating Transaction Capture / Revenue & receivables Account for summarized revenue, receivables, sales tax, distinct Sales-source customer-receipt clearing events, and the bounded seller-owned sales-tax accounting and remittance controls accepted by ADR 0034. Sales orders, shipping, customer invoice operations, collections, payment processing, bank-deposit execution, tax determination, return transmission, and tax-payment initiation.
Purchasing and Payables Summary Operating Transaction Capture / General expenses and Purchasing & payables Account for summarized operating expense, inventory acquisition, prepayment, payable, accrual, contractor, payment issuance, matching, approval, and allocation evidence. Purchase order operations, receipts, vendor-bill operations, payment execution, BillCatcher, capital projects, and the fixed-asset lifecycle.
Inventory Summary Operating Transaction Capture / Inventory & production Account for summarized inventory ins and outs, beginning and ending inventory, cost of goods sold, variances, and reconciliation evidence. Operational stock movement, item master, warehouse, production control, and perpetual inventory system.
Banking and Finance Summary Operating Transaction Capture / Cash & banking Account for summarized cash, bank, credit-card, receipt-clearing, disbursement-clearing, and reconciliation entries leading to reviewed closing balances. Bank-feed operation, deposit composition, payment instruments, card activity, and reconciliation detail.
Corrections Correction & Conversion Controls Correct posted accounting records through reversal or adjustment paths that preserve posted history. Silent mutation of posted accounting records; broad migration-entry workflows.
QBO controlled cutover Correction & Conversion Controls In a replacement scenario, convert one existing QBO company into BooksPlus-supported chart and opening accounting state through a company-scoped conversion run, reviewed mappings, reconciliation, approval, and protected posting. Applying QBO conversion requirements to startup scenarios; full-history conversion, unsupported operational masters and subledgers, recurring synchronization, QuickBooks Desktop, and broad migration-entry workflows.
Period Close Close Processing Run close checks, warnings, blockers, waivers, approvals, period transitions, close report packs, and close evidence coordination. Using close as ordinary transaction entry; detailed tax accrual workflow until canonical truth defines it.
Reporting Ledger and close review support Produce formal reports, persisted report runs, close packs, and review support from posted ledger truth. Reports based on workflow staging records instead of posted ledger truth.

Current Period Workbench replaces Daily Accounting as a launch navigation idea. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual cadence may appear as task timing, but cadence is not a separate accounting domain.

Sales and Receivables Summary accounts for summarized revenue, receivable, sales-tax, and customer-receipt facts from external operations instead of owning operational sales order and invoice work. For seller-owned sales tax, it also participates in the bounded reconciliation, return-support, approval, external-completion evidence, remittance accounting, and bank-linkage boundary accepted by ADR 0034. BooksPlus does not calculate tax, transmit returns, initiate payments, or become the operational invoicing system under that boundary.

The separately deployable BP3 Dolibarr operational package must support sales- order creation and customer standard, replacement, credit-note, and deposit invoice creation for the initial production release. Pro-forma and situation/progress invoice workflows are deferred until separately accepted. This operational capability does not authorize BooksPlus credit, correction, reversal, deposit-accounting, tax, or posting treatment; those meanings remain governed by their canonical accounting and workflow authority, including ADR 0021.

Purchasing and Payables Summary accounts for summarized expense, inventory acquisition, prepayment, payable, payment-clearing, and contractor facts from external operations instead of owning operational purchasing or payment execution. BillCatcher, capital projects, and the entire fixed-asset lifecycle are deferred beyond the initial release.

Inventory Summary accounts for summarized inventory valuation, cost, variance, and reconciliation facts from external operations instead of owning operational item, stock, warehouse, production, or perpetual-inventory work.

Banking and Finance Summary accounts for summarized cash, bank, credit-card, clearing, and reconciliation results while the operational system retains the underlying banking and payment detail.

Corrections is a distinct protected Accounting workflow for reversing or adjusting one posted journal entry. It may consume imported change candidates and accepted-event relationships, but it does not use Summary Accounting batches and does not change the owning workflow or posted history of the target event.

QBO controlled cutover is the bounded initial-release conversion accepted by ADR 0032. It uses a separate company-scoped CompanyConversionRun to coordinate existing BooksPlus intake, chart, evidence, opening-balance, authorization, period, audit, and posting behavior. It does not activate broad migration entries or create unsupported operational masters, subledgers, or historical accounting workflows.

Startup and replacement are entry scenarios, not new accounting domains. A startup scenario uses Setup & Onboarding without a source accounting system or conversion aggregate. The QBO controlled cutover applies only to the replacement scenario. Both reuse canonical chart, opening-balance, period, permission, audit, backup, and posting owners where applicable.

Workflow taxonomy and status

Application navigation must include workflow family, group, workflow label, and implementation status before exposing the full tree as executable workflow actions. Valid implementation statuses are active, planned, and deferred.

Financial Workflows:

  • Financial Control
  • Setup & Onboarding (active)
  • Accounting policy (active through setup policy baseline)
  • Approval controls (active through setup and protected actions)
  • Strategy & budgeting (deferred)
  • Funding: equity and long-term debt (deferred)
  • Capability development / capex (deferred)
  • Compliance (deferred outside the bounded information-return and seller-owned sales-tax controls accepted by ADRs 0025 and 0034)
    • Income tax (deferred)
    • Franchise tax (deferred)
    • Property tax (deferred)
    • Industry-specific taxes and fees (deferred)
    • Filing calendar (deferred)
    • Compliance review (deferred)
  • Operating Transaction Capture
  • Current Period Workbench (active)
  • General expenses (active through Purchasing and Payables Summary)
  • Revenue & receivables (active through Sales and Receivables Summary)
    • Sales tax generated from sales activity (active through summarized income accounting and the bounded ADR 0034 return and remittance controls)
  • Purchasing & payables (active through Purchasing and Payables Summary)
    • Use tax and vendor tax treatment (deferred)
  • Inventory & production (active through Inventory Summary)
  • Payroll (deferred except contractor/1099 support in Purchasing and Payables Summary)
    • Payroll taxes and payroll tax liabilities (deferred)
  • Cash & banking (active through Banking and Finance Summary)
    • Reconciliation (active through Banking and Finance Summary)
    • Tax payments and remittances (deferred except approved seller-owned sales-tax remittance accounting, external-completion evidence, and bank linkage under ADR 0034)
  • Close Processing
  • Period Close (active)
  • Close report packs (active)
  • Review adjustments (active through correction and posting controls)
  • Manual close-period entries (active through ordinary posting and correction controls)
  • Automated closing entries (deferred)
  • Accruals & deferrals (planned through Purchasing and Payables Summary and close slices)
  • Depreciation (deferred)
  • Amortization (deferred)
  • Tax accruals (deferred)
  • Allocations (deferred)
  • Recurring entries (deferred)
  • Reclassifications (deferred)
  • Correction & Conversion Controls
  • Opening balances (active through Setup & Onboarding)
  • Corrections (active)
  • Voids and reversals (active through correction controls)
  • QBO controlled cutover (active)
  • Migration entries (deferred)
  • Prior-period adjustments (deferred)

The contractor-classification and Form 1099-NEC capability accepted by ADR 0025 is a bounded part of Purchasing and Payables Summary. It does not activate the broader Payroll or Compliance workflow families. Payroll accounting, payroll taxes, general compliance management, and tax workflows other than the accepted information-return scope retain their statuses above.

The purchasing-accrual and manually reviewed non-inventory prepayment-recognition facts accepted by ADR 0024 are bounded Purchasing and Payables Summary facts. They do not activate a general-purpose Accruals & Deferrals workflow or the deferred amortization, allocation, or recurring-entry workflows. The broader Accruals & Deferrals node remains planned until its remaining close behavior and implementation scope are separately defined.

The seller-owned sales-tax capability accepted by ADR 0034 is a bounded control across Sales and Receivables, Accounting, Source Documents, Close, Reporting, and Banking and Finance. It does not activate general Compliance, make BooksPlus a tax-calculation or filing system, or authorize payment execution. Return transmission, tax-payment initiation, native invoicing, and tax-provider transaction APIs remain deferred.

Deferred workflow nodes must not appear as active workflows until canonical truth, implementation contracts, release planning, and application code define their behavior.

Rules

  • All ledger effects must post through the central Accounting posting path.
  • Workflow staging records, summary batches, imports, adapter payloads, and review queues are not formal report truth.
  • Formal accounting reports must derive from posted ledger truth.
  • Source Documents owns evidence identity, references, and supersession for all workflow families.
  • Close owns close runs, checks, waivers, approvals, close evidence coordination, and close-driven period transitions. Close must not bypass Accounting for ledger effects.
  • Provider-specific adapters must map into BooksPlus import or intake contracts before workflows, posting, close checks, reporting, or evidence linkage consume the facts.
  • Manual entry and reviewable file intake must be implemented before system-specific operational adapters. BooksPlus workflow meaning must remain stable before automation depends on it.
  • Summary accounting workflows must preserve source identity, external references, source-world dates, BooksPlus acceptance time, evidence references, validation issues, review status, and resulting journal-entry references.
  • File or machine intake that can affect accounting workflows must define idempotency expectations. Conflicting reuse of a source identity and idempotency key must not silently overwrite accepted meaning.
  • Corrections are cross-workflow behavior. Posted accounting records must be corrected through reversal or adjustment, not silent mutation.
  • Correction workflow records support review and drilldown, while the target and posted correction journal entries remain ledger and formal report truth.
  • summary_type values are not replaced by the workflow taxonomy.

Development sequence

Development proceeds in this order:

  1. Align release truth and navigation.
  2. Stabilize the accounting kernel.
  3. Build Setup & Onboarding.
  4. Build the Current Period Workbench.
  5. Add the Summary Accounting foundation.
  6. Simplify the Current Period Workbench around the summary transaction desk.
  7. Build Sales and Receivables Summary.
  8. Build Purchasing and Payables Summary and 1099 support.
  9. Build Inventory Summary.
  10. Build Banking and Finance Summary.
  11. Build Corrections.
  12. Build Period Close.
  13. Build Reporting.
  14. Add QBO controlled cutover; keep external automation deferred.
  15. Complete desktop workflow exposure, initial-release UAT, production security administration, managed installation and lawful licensing, customer documentation packaging, and release qualification.

The QBO conversion profile and adapter submit facts through existing BooksPlus import contracts. They must not submit ledger mutations, redefine provider vocabulary as BooksPlus canonical meaning, or remove manual and file intake fallback paths. Automated Dolibarr REST delivery, production Dolibarr payload mapping, direct IRIS A2A, QuickBooks Desktop, recurring synchronization, and tax-product adapters remain deferred under ADRs 0025, 0032, and 0034. Before release qualification, the bounded ADR 0034 capability requires its canonical contract, dependent contract amendments, implementation, and acceptance tests.

Step 15 is release readiness, not a new accounting workflow. Implemented launch capabilities are not releasable merely because their domain and application services exist: the supported desktop application must expose the required user actions, blocked outcomes, review state, and drilldown. Initial- release acceptance must cover both startup and QBO replacement scenarios and must exercise corrections, Close, the three standard reports, backup and restore, and duplicate/replay behavior through supported product surfaces.

Production user and permission administration, managed-local installation, upgrade and recovery, and lawful license enforcement are initial-release delivery obligations. Their detailed behavior remains truth-gated: the final production role and permission boundary must be accepted by amending the Roles and Permissions contract and, if needed, a dedicated ADR. The deployment and licensing design must be accepted before implementation. License enforcement must preserve the customer-control principles for access to existing records, backup, export, and recovery.

The customer documentation set must be built from the applicable user and sysadmin guidance while excluding internal truth-maintenance, planning, implementation, test, and provider-development material. Documentation packaging is derived release work and does not create product meaning.

Consequences

This ADR gives BooksPlus one canonical release-scope and workflow taxonomy decision.

ADR 0018 is superseded by this ADR. Derived documentation, planning pages, contracts, and implementation prompts must use this ADR as the current release-scope and workflow-taxonomy source.

The product can document a durable financial workflow structure without overstating current implementation scope.

User-facing workflow names better match launch behavior and avoid implying that BooksPlus owns operational sales, purchasing, banking, payroll, tax, payment, or inventory processes in the first release.

Future operational modules can be added without changing the accounting kernel, because they must normalize into provider-agnostic contracts and post through Accounting.

The initial release requires clear user documentation so users understand which work remains in their external operational systems.

Amended on 2026-08-12 to clarify that accepted contractor and Form 1099-NEC support does not activate the broader Payroll or Compliance families, and that accepted Purchasing accrual and prepayment-recognition facts do not activate a general-purpose Accruals & Deferrals workflow or related deferred workflows.

Amended on 2026-08-12 to include bounded seller-owned sales-tax accounting, reconciliation, return support, protected approval, external filing and payment evidence, remittance posting, and bank linkage in the initial release while keeping tax determination, return transmission, payment initiation, native invoicing, and general compliance management deferred under ADR 0034.

  • ../../vision-and-product-principles.md
  • ../../ux-principles.md
  • ../../accounting/posting-and-reversal.md
  • ../../accounting/source-documents.md
  • ../../accounting/close.md
  • ../../accounting/summary-accounting.md
  • ../../contracts/kernel.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/summary-accounting-batch.contract.md
  • 0007-provider-agnostic-import-boundaries.md
  • 0024-operational-summary-workflow-boundaries-and-purchasing-facts.md
  • 0032-qbo-first-controlled-cutover.md
  • 0009-persisted-report-runs.md
  • 0010-close-runs-and-report-packs.md
  • 0015-accounting-posting-foundation.md
  • 0025-contractor-classification-and-information-return-filing.md
  • 0034-sales-tax-accounting-and-remittance-boundary.md
  • ../../contracts/purchasing-and-payables-summary-fact.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/contractor-and-information-return-filing.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/accounting-correction.contract.md
  • ../../contracts/company-conversion-run.contract.md
  • ../superseded/0018-bp3-initial-release-scope-and-development-sequence.md