An invoice is issued, not edited. Without `confirmed` the create tools now preview: the posting (with the accounts' codes, which the live chart may not hold yet), the number it will take, its due date, terms and early discount, warnings, and for an invoice the DRAFT copy of the PDF, handed over as a file. Nothing is written and no number is used up. With `confirmed` the invoice posts, takes the number the preview showed, and files the issued copy with itself in the same call: `receipt.attached` on its entry plus the link to the invoice, its SHA-256 in the event (A-1, A-7, B-40). The copy the customer received is therefore the copy in the books, and `books.document`'s re-created page can never be mistaken for it. The result also carries a `mailto` link for a human to send it; the books never send (A-4). A bill keeps what the plan says a bill is: the vendor's own invoice number, the vendor's invoice filed on its entry as its evidence, and, in books that have declared `documents_v2`, an account on every line, so no bill can land in General Expenses by default any more (A-9, A-10, A-13). A vendor number entered twice is refused unless the caller says why, and the reason is journaled with the second bill (B-40 item 4). Books that have not declared the feature keep recording bills exactly as before, so the owner's books keep working between units (D-39, 8.0.4). Terms are resolved in one place and in one order: the due date given, else the terms given, else the customer's or vendor's own default, else the books' `invoicing.default_terms`; a document given only a due date stores no terms, so an old-shape invoice is still written byte for byte as before (B-39, A-13). D-55: a party carries the owner's full contact block (phone, contact person, billing and shipping addresses, billing email). It rides the same `party.updated` event behind `documents_v2`, and an invoice's bill-to is snapshotted at issue with the billing address and billing email in place of the general ones when the party has them — `PartySnapshot::from_party` is the one place that rule lives, so a later edit cannot change what was sent, and the next invoice takes today's details. Tests: the wire tests are the new `crates/ledger-cli/tests/documents.rs` (preview writes nothing, the DRAFT copy, the issued copy's SHA-256 equals `books.get_receipt`'s, numbers run, a bill's file and terms, the duplicate refusal, the line-account rules, the terms fallback, the `party_id` alias and the ambiguity it refuses, the contact block's set and clear, and the bill-to at issue); `format_upgrade.rs` gains `documents_v2_refused_until_consent` and the cut-over test now refuses and then makes a document carrying a new field (8.0.6 item 3); the store tests are `the_contact_block_round_trips_and_replays` and `an_invoice_keeps_the_billing_details_it_was_issued_with`, and `books_written_under_older_rules_still_open` gains a hand-written contact-block event (8.0.6 item 1). Merge does not need the owner's go-ahead: the live books refuse a write that needs `documents_v2` until he gives it, and take every other write as before (8.0.6 item 6). No figure moved: S4 moves none.
Specification sources
wanderbooks' rules come from documents, not from anyone's memory. This
directory holds the authorities the engine's specs cite (docs/spec/rules.md
is the rule catalog), and every spec block in the code carries a SOURCE:
line pointing into it.
The authority stack
There is no single "bible" of US bookkeeping. Authority is layered, and the layers differ in what they cover and in whether we may copy them:
| Layer | What it governs | Copyright | Here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pacioli (1494), Geijsbeek translation (1914) | The mechanics of double entry: debits equal credits, the trial balance, one money, writing only forward, correcting by opposite entry, closing into capital. No modern standard restates these; they predate every regulator. | Public domain | Vendored verbatim: sources/pacioli-1494.md |
| IRS: Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, publications, form instructions | Records and supporting documents, retention, accounting periods and methods, information returns (1099), capitalization (de minimis, 12-month rule), partners' capital, tax basis of purchased and contributed property (sources/irs-partnership-basis.md), payroll taxes, rounding on returns, return line items for tax categories (sources/irs-tax-lines.md) |
Public domain (17 U.S.C. §105; IRS.gov's content policy) | Vendored verbatim: sources/irs-*.md, sources/us-public-domain-status.md |
| File formats: Intuit (QuickBooks Online bank CSV, QuickBooks Desktop IIF), ECMA-376 Office Open XML, Microsoft Excel limits, Avery label sheets | What ledger-import reads and writes: bank/card CSV layouts and signs, IIF journal entries, how XLSX stores numbers and Excel's 15-digit precision, asset-label sheet geometry (Avery 5160) |
© Intuit Inc.; © Ecma International; © Microsoft; © Avery Products Corporation | Cited with short quotes, URLs, and hashes: sources/intuit-bank-csv.md, sources/intuit-iif.md, sources/xlsx-numbers.md, sources/avery-5160.md |
| FASB Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) | Authoritative US GAAP: cash flows (ASC 230), revenue and principal vs agent (ASC 606), foreign currency (ASC 830), credit losses and aging (ASC 326), property and depreciation (ASC 360) | © Financial Accounting Foundation | Cited by paragraph with short quotes only (in rules.md; the paragraphs read, with where and when, in sources/fasb-asc.md and below) |
| FASB Concepts Statement No. 8, Chapter 4 (2021) | Definitions of the five elements (it replaced Concepts Statement 6) | © Financial Accounting Foundation; non-authoritative | Cited with short quotes only |
| Textbooks (OpenStax Principles of Accounting, Vol. 1) | Conventions no standard states: normal balances, closing-entry mechanics, straight-line depreciation arithmetic | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (incompatible with this repo's license) | Cited with short quotes and attribution only |
| Convention or decision | Where no authority speaks: aging bucket edges, cent rounding among members, closed-period locks | — | Stated as CONVENTION or CHOICE, with who decided and when |
How to read a SOURCE line
SOURCE: Pacioli ch. 36 (sources/pacioli-1494.md); IRS Pub. 583 (sources/irs-records.md)
SOURCE: ASC 830-20-30-1 (cited, rules.md B-3)
SOURCE: CHOICE (the owner, 2026-10-13)
SOURCE: CONVENTION (QuickBooks aging); nearest authority ASC 326-20-55-38 (illustrative)
A rule whose only source is CONVENTION or CHOICE is a candidate for a human to confirm or overturn; nothing else is.
Rules added later never lock out older books
When a rule is tightened (a check added to a command), books written
before it must still open. Journal replay and the SQLite cross-check read
history through the engine's replay_* commands, which skip checks added
later; new commands go through the checked ones. Pinned by
books_written_under_older_rules_still_open (ledger-store).
Vendoring rules
- Public-domain texts are copied verbatim (whitespace normalized), each with its URL, retrieval date, and the SHA-256 of the retrieved file, so anyone can check the excerpt against the original.
- Copyrighted sources are cited by paragraph, quoted briefly, never copied.
- When an authority changes (the IRS revises a publication; a statute is amended), add the new text beside the old with its effective date. Rules that depend on dates (1099 thresholds) must say which text applies when.
- Rules that change with the law are registered in
crates/ledger-core/src/rules.rswith the years they are known for and a review date. Past what it knows, the engine refuses rather than guesses; from the review date, the MCP digest and the viewer flag the rule. Whoever updates one (human or agent) vendors the new official text here, extends the rule, and sends the change upstream: a pull request at https://github.com/swaits/wanderbooks (best), or an issue.
Open: sources we could not verify
Read on 2026-10-13 through Deloitte's free DART roadmaps, which reproduce
ASC text: ASC 230-10-45-16 and -28, 326-20-55-37/38, 606-10-25-23, 45-2,
55-37/38, 830-20-30-1. Read directly in the ASC basic view on 2026-10-14
(sources/fasb-asc.md): 360-10-35-4, 340-10-05-2/4/5, 210-10-45-1/2/5,
230-10-45-7/10/12/13/14/15, 606-10-55-36 through 55-38. Read on
2026-10-20 where public sources reproduce the Codification (EY's FRD on
the statement of cash flows, July 2026; FASB ASUs 2016-15 and 2016-18;
Deloitte's public DART Roadmap): ASC 230-10-10-1, 45-1, 45-4, 45-5,
45-8, 45-9, 45-12(c), 45-13(c), 45-14(a), 45-15(a)/(c), 45-16(a)/(b),
45-17, 45-24 to 45-26, 45-28 to 45-31, 50-3 to 50-8, and 830-230-45-1;
each checked again against the same sources in the P3 review (numbers,
pages and wording hold). Open: 105-10-05-1 to 05-3, read only in their
2009 text (ASU 2009-01, and as Wiley GAAP 2020 quotes them); their
current wording is unconfirmed. Also open (P3 surface review, 2026-10-21): ASC 230-10-45-15(f) (debt
issue costs, cited by B-14 rule 11) is in neither list above; ASC
606-10-25-31, 25-32 and 55-20 (B-16's over-time method) are not yet read;
B-15 rule 6 cites ASC 250 with no paragraph; B-17's 606-10-55-39 is in
neither list. Each is to be read in the ASC basic view and listed in
sources/fasb-asc.md before it is relied on further. Also open (plan
P4b, 2026-10-23): B-38 cites ASC 310-10, 405-20-40-1 and 606-10-45-4,
none yet read in the ASC basic view; B-38 keeps the CONVENTION label
until they are vendored with a SHA-256, as P4b.16 lists with the sources
B-39 to B-41 will need.