Close Account

In accounting, a closing entry calculates the net debit or credit balance for an account and then credits or debits this balance respectively, to zero the account's balance and move the balance to another account.

Additionally, it may be desirable to forbid further transfers on this account (i.e. at the end of an accounting period, upon account termination, or even temporarily freezing the account for audit purposes.

Example

Given a set of accounts:

Account	Debits Pending	Debits Posted	Credits Pending	Credits Posted	Flags
A	0	10	0	20	debits_must_not_exceed_credits
B	0	30	0	5	credits_must_not_exceed_debits
C	0	0	0	0

The "closing entries" for accounts A and B are expressed as linked chains, so they either succeed or fail atomically.

• Account A: the linked transfers are T1 and T2.

• Account B: the linked transfers are T3 and T4.

• Account C: is the control account and will not be closed.

Transfer	Debit Account	Credit Account	Amount	Amount (recorded)	Flags
T1	A	C	AMOUNT_MAX	10	balancing_debit,linked
T2	A	C	0	0	closing_debit, pending
T3	C	B	AMOUNT_MAX	25	balancing_credit,linked
T4	C	B	0	0	closing_credit, pending

• T1 and T3 are balancing transfers with AMOUNT_MAX as the Transfer.amount so that the application does not need to know (or query) the balance prior to closing the account.

  The stored transfer's amount will be set to the actual amount transferred.

• T2 and T4 are closing transfers that will cause the respective account to be closed.

  The closing transfer must be also a pending transfer so the action can be reversible.

After committing these transfers, A and B are closed with net balance zero, and will reject any further transfers.

Account	Debits Pending	Debits Posted	Credits Pending	Credits Posted	Flags
A	0	20	0	20	debits_must_not_exceed_credits, closed
B	0	30	0	30	credits_must_not_exceed_debits, closed
C	0	25	0	10

To re-open the closed account, the pending closing transfer can be voided, reverting the closing action (but not reverting the net balance):

Transfer	Debit Account	Credit Account	Amount	Pending Transfer	Flags
T5	A	C	0	T2	void_pending_transfer
T6	C	B	0	T4	void_pending_transfer

After committing these transfers, A and B are re-opened and can accept transfers again:

Account	Debits Pending	Debits Posted	Credits Pending	Credits Posted	Flags
A	0	20	0	20	debits_must_not_exceed_credits
B	0	30	0	30	credits_must_not_exceed_debits
C	0	25	0	10