I make retail commitments visible in the financial account: what a customer has prepaid, what a business account still owes and what a purchasing incentive would require us to carry.
I learned accounts in a business that served traders whose working day rarely followed the neat order of a ledger. A delivery could be urgent, a document could arrive later and a customer could describe a payment differently from the colleague who recorded it. My early work was not to decide which commercial relationship deserved more credit. It was to assemble a coherent account so that someone with that responsibility could make the decision. That distinction stayed with me as my authority grew:preparing a persuasive number is useful only if its meaning survives the meeting in which it is used.
The commercial appeal of a transaction does not describe every obligation it creates. I want finance to show the customer promise still outstanding, the exposure still awaiting payment and the stock still requiring a buyer before an attractive number becomes a decision.