Yes -- or rather it is designed to identify the issue that floating point causes.
The main idea behind double ledger accounting is that if you add a long list of the same numbers twice (as totally independent operations), then if you have added both lists correctly, you the two independent results will be the same. If you made at least one mistake in adding either or both of the lists, then it is possible, but unlikely that the results will match.
It's easy to think that computers don't make mistakes like humans when adding numbers, however floating point addition for long sequences of numbers is non deterministic (and error prone if you don't sort the numbers first and start with the small ones).
While double ledger systems won't fix this problem, they will identify if you have a problem with your addition (particularly a non-deterministic one like you would find with floating point addition) when you go to reconcile your books and find that the numbers across the various accounts don't add up.
Double entry is (confusingly) not about recording it twice, it's about using a transaction model where the state of N accounts has to be changed in compensating directions within a transaction for it to be valid, N being >= 2.
So depending on how your transaction schema is defined, a double-entry transaction can be written without ever even repeating the amount, e.g.
Making it effectively impossible to represent invalid state change. Things get trickier when N > 2 as classical double-entry tend to _not_ directly relate tuples of accounts directly to one-another and instead relying on a aggregated balancing of the changes to the N accounts at the transaction level, though YMMV between different ledgering systems.
There was no question, that I was answering. Simple someone claiming they have no idea how it would even be possible for a $5 end up being $4.98, while literally stating they know about floating point issues.
Yes -- or rather it is designed to identify the issue that floating point causes.
The main idea behind double ledger accounting is that if you add a long list of the same numbers twice (as totally independent operations), then if you have added both lists correctly, you the two independent results will be the same. If you made at least one mistake in adding either or both of the lists, then it is possible, but unlikely that the results will match.
It's easy to think that computers don't make mistakes like humans when adding numbers, however floating point addition for long sequences of numbers is non deterministic (and error prone if you don't sort the numbers first and start with the small ones).
While double ledger systems won't fix this problem, they will identify if you have a problem with your addition (particularly a non-deterministic one like you would find with floating point addition) when you go to reconcile your books and find that the numbers across the various accounts don't add up.
> Does recording it twice
Double entry is (confusingly) not about recording it twice, it's about using a transaction model where the state of N accounts has to be changed in compensating directions within a transaction for it to be valid, N being >= 2.
So depending on how your transaction schema is defined, a double-entry transaction can be written without ever even repeating the amount, e.g.
Making it effectively impossible to represent invalid state change. Things get trickier when N > 2 as classical double-entry tend to _not_ directly relate tuples of accounts directly to one-another and instead relying on a aggregated balancing of the changes to the N accounts at the transaction level, though YMMV between different ledgering systems.
There was no question, that I was answering. Simple someone claiming they have no idea how it would even be possible for a $5 end up being $4.98, while literally stating they know about floating point issues.