11.6 - Roll Call Accounting Principles

-Roll Call Accounting is the ability to track objects and data over time using a series of dates and flags. Imagine the web server or computer asking the objects and data to return and report. What's your story? Who created you? Where have you been? Where are you headed? Who are your buddies? Where do you belong? When did you finish? etc, etc, etc. Virtually require each piece of data to hold its own luggage.

-The concept of a roll call is what you learn back in kindergarten/first grade when the teacher is asking, “Where is Johnny?” or “Is so & so here?”. So basically what we do is track the life cycle of data. All data has a life-cycle and goes through different processes in that life-cycle. The roll call comes into play by asking the data questions such as where the data was at a given time, where it is now, who touched it or performed certain actions, etc.

-There are 3 main groups of history tracked in Adilas: Effectual – what shows up for roll call (where is an object at, with date & time stamps), Historical – who touched what (actions/histories), & Financial – what & where does this show up on the financials.

-We have determined that there are 12 main players in the system. Some of the roll call is talking to those individual players or groups and asking them questions based off of the state or status they are in, what point in their life-cycle they are at, where they need to go next, etc. That might sound random to keep it that broad, but each individual player performs certain tasks. Many of those tasks can be mapped directly back to the financials such as sales, quantity - inventory tracking, expenses, COGS, payroll, taxes, etc. Everything has a date/time stamp along with what phase or step it is in. We simply map to that. That is roll call accounting.

-Here is a small example. Let’s say a customer comes in and wants to buy something. Before the sale happens your product is in inventory and no monies are owed by that person. Once the sale is complete we now have a reduction in inventory, we have new sales money that either needs to be deposited or is still owed based on payments made. We have a tax liability, we have COGS, and we know a profit that was made. All of those pieces can be mapped back to physical spots on the P&L or balance sheet. The important part is progressing that data through the data assembly process where you are flagging, dating, stamping, etc. The data if it’s ran through the assembly line process actually allows us to do the roll call accounting.

-A huge part of the roll call accounting piece deals with allowing your data to flex. Disclaimer: certain accounting people may start freaking out at this point but if you don’t allow your data to flex or go into virtual waiting spots while the data is waiting for some of its other pieces you have to do all sorts of adjustments to keep everything picture perfect. Our concept is that things often flex. We hold them in that flex state until they can pass that next checkpoint which is where they are flagged, stamped, and then can get passed on to the next step.

-Some people say, “Okay I see how that can happen once”, meaning a flex point,  but what we see is that it happens over and over and over again. This is why we treat it like the data assembly line. Some data might go through 3, 4, or multiple steps until it has completed its entire life-cycle. But if there is any data that has an issue or has a need to allow for time to pass before completing its life-cycle it needs to stay in that flex zone until it is ready to be advanced. This could be waiting for another process to happen to the data, another person to perform a certain task with the data, waiting for something to happen physically before the data can be advanced, etc. There are endless scenarios that cause this circumstance where the data needs to flex or get held in a waiting area of sorts before it is ready to progress down the data assembly line.

-The link below is an entry from 2014 where we were expanding our vision of how we have seen things start rolling in this roll call/data assembly line type concept. The entry shows a number of small drawings as well as information. If you are interested in this concept it might be a fun read for you. https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=2894

-Here is some additional content on roll call accounting.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=roll%20call