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Last reviewed: 2026-07-04

UX Principles

Purpose

BooksPlus usability must support accounting integrity, close discipline, and user confidence.

The goal is not to make accounting trivial. The goal is to make accounting work understandable, guided, and safe.

Core rules

  • Users must be able to tell what state the books, periods, transactions, reports, and close work are in.
  • Users must be able to tell what needs attention next.
  • Routine work should be fast and low-friction.
  • Exceptions must be classified and guided rather than mysterious.
  • Validation and errors must use business language.
  • High-risk actions must be visible and deliberate.
  • Consequential actions must show a preview or summary before completion.
  • Correction paths must be explicit, safe, and auditable.
  • Evidence, source documents, approvals, and audit references must be discoverable where they matter.
  • User-facing screens must use recognizable business references instead of raw internal identifiers except where exact audit, support, import, export, or troubleshooting traceability is needed.
  • Expert users should be able to move quickly without forcing novice users to guess.

State clarity

Every important workspace must answer:

  • What am I looking at?
  • What state is it in?
  • What needs attention?
  • What can I do next?

Relevant states include draft, reviewed, posted, reversed, open, soft closed, hard closed, reopened, blocked, warning, ready for review, and approved.

Business language

Messages must use accounting and business terms rather than implementation terms.

Prefer:

  • This period is hard closed and cannot accept new postings.
  • Inventory valuation does not match the inventory control account.

Avoid:

  • Illegal state transition.
  • Model validation failed.

Consequential actions

Before a consequential action completes, the user must understand:

  • what will change;
  • why it matters;
  • whether it can be corrected or reversed;
  • what evidence, approvals, audit trail, or period controls are affected.

Consequential actions include posting, reversal, period close, reopen, waiver, protected setup changes, valuation rebuilds, backup restore, sensitive export, and similar high-impact work.

Exception handling

Exceptions must identify:

  • what failed;
  • why it matters;
  • what object or period it relates to;
  • whether it is a blocker, warning, or informational item;
  • what the next action is.

Accounting workspaces

Accounting workspaces should favor readable density over decorative design.

Tables, registers, dashboards, and exception lists should support scanning, sorting, filtering, searching, comparison, drilldown, and action-taking without losing context.

Human-facing references

Raw internal identifiers must not be the primary way ordinary users recognize, select, compare, or enter business objects.

Prefer stable business-facing references: company display names, actor display names, account code and name, financial period label, source document reference, evidence reference, report name, transaction reference, and human-visible journal entry number when available.

Where exact internal identity matters, show full raw identifiers in detail, audit, support, import review, export, troubleshooting, or developer views. In ordinary workspaces, use labels, search, lookup controls, drilldown links, and copyable short references so traceability remains available without making raw identifiers dominate the workflow.

Shortened identifiers may help distinguish otherwise similar records, but they must not replace the durable internal identifier used by domain, persistence, audit, import, or recovery behavior.

Date clarity

The interface must distinguish date meanings where they differ:

  • entry date;
  • posting or effective date;
  • financial period;
  • as-of date;
  • generated date;
  • close date.

Accounting dates and event timestamps must also remain distinct. Period, as-of, posting, and close dates lead with their company-local business-date meaning. Generated, evaluated, approved, finalized, captured, and audit times may render in a user-preferred named zone, but changing that presentation must not change accounting meaning. Show the company accounting zone or exact UTC detail where another reasonable interpretation is possible.

Accessibility and readability

BooksPlus should prefer:

  • clear headings;
  • strong labels;
  • adequate contrast;
  • keyboard-friendly data entry;
  • predictable layouts;
  • restrained visual noise.

Acceptance expectations

A feature is not complete merely because it works technically.

Major features must let the user:

  • determine current state within seconds;
  • identify the next action without guesswork;
  • understand validation failures in business terms;
  • preview consequential action impact;
  • find related evidence;
  • recover from errors and exceptions without being stranded.
  • vision-and-product-principles.md
  • contracts/kernel.contract.md
  • accounting/posting-and-reversal.md
  • accounting/close.md
  • accounting/source-documents.md
  • contracts/security/protected-action-contract.md