Operations control

Every guarded action, such as approving a document, posting a journal, applying cash or cancelling scope, writes an operation receipt. The receipt holds the operation key, the action, the revision expected, the time, and a result: pending, completed, failed or needs review. It also records references to the effects the action was meant to produce and, when something went wrong, the reason.

Receipts are what make retries safe and failures visible. A repeated request with the same operation key returns the earlier result instead of acting twice. A failure is never hidden behind an optimistic total. It waits in the exception queue until someone checks what actually happened.

The operations analyst works the exception queue; the controller watches it at period end.

• One key, one effect. Each operation key produces its effect once.
• Checked, not assumed. Reconciliation reads what was actually saved, such as a posted balanced journal, applied cash or a recorded decision, before marking a receipt completed.
• Exceptions in one place. Pending, failed and needs-review receipts appear together with their reason.

Agree who works the exception queue and how often reconciliation runs, scheduled or on request. Agree what an analyst does with a receipt whose effect is missing: retry, escalate or correct. Prepare examples of a completed posting, a timed-out posting that did complete, a timed-out posting that did not, and a cash application refused for exceeding the balance.

A batch of postings is interrupted by a network fault. Three receipts are left pending. Reconciliation finds that two of the journals were posted and balanced, and marks those receipts completed. The third journal was never saved, so its receipt stays in the queue with the reason. The analyst sends it again under the same operation key, it posts once, and the queue is clear before the period closes.

• Operation exceptions — Pending, failed and needs-review receipts with their reason.

• Operation reconciliation: From a pending receipt to a verified result.

See reports for exception trends.