A restored archive of writing originally published 1997-2010 at ledgerism.net.
Todd Boyle was an accountant who, between 1997 and 2010, published a series of essays and software specifications on how general ledgers should be structured, how transactions should pass between independent organizations without redundant re-entry, and how digital instruments could carry value without bank intermediation. His work sits in the citation chain that runs from double-entry accounting theory through triple-entry accounting to Bitcoin and the modern blockchain accounting literature.
Every link below leads to a page restored from a 1997-2010 Wayback Machine capture. Original text is preserved; an Archive Notice banner has been added to identify the page as a deliberate restoration. The pages are not maintained or updated.
AR/AP XML schema -- a UBL-compatible message format for accounts receivable / accounts payable exchange.
CIO sign-off considerations for inter-organizational accounting systems.
Digital bearer certificate essay -- the philosophical case for cash-like digital instruments.
End the redundancy: why every party in a transaction should not have to maintain its own private ledger of the same facts.
Financial deregulation and the case for end-to-end transaction recording outside the regulated banking layer.
GLIEs -- General Ledger Interchange entries, an early form of inter-ledger message envelope.
GLT and GLR: conceptual architecture for general ledger transports and general ledger repositories.
General ledger entry v0.95 specification -- the most detailed of Boyle's GL entry message-format drafts.
Grid accounting: applying utility-computing patterns to general-ledger workloads.
An IETF-style proposal for standard internet accounting message formats.
Ledger ontology: the noun-verb structure of double-entry, formalized for machine reasoning.
Peer-to-peer accounting exchanges -- the architecture that lets two parties reconcile without a central clearer.
Shared Transaction Repository -- high-level software specification for a network service that stores signed copies of economic events between counterparties.
Signed promissory notes -- digital instruments for peer-to-peer credit creation.
Universal Economic Event Notation -- a 2005 sketch of a universal message format for economic events.
Using credit-card transactions inside general ledgers: settlement and reconciliation patterns.
AR/AP cloud: distributed accounting infrastructure where receivables and payables reconcile against a shared substrate.
DBC trust model: the cryptographic underpinnings of digital bearer certificates.
Devices in the accounting loop: how mobile and embedded systems participate in transaction-level recording.
Digital bearer settlement: instruments that transfer value without a counterparty entry.
End-to-end accounting argument -- why message integrity must be preserved from origination to final ledger.
Five Barrier Communications: the persistent gap between firms' books that machine-readable settlement can close.
Hypercube model of multi-dimensional ledger reporting.
Journal bus: a message-bus pattern for distributing journal entries between independently operated ledger systems.
Reputation, identity, and the economic substrate for non-bank settlement networks.
Root ledger XML -- the deepest of Boyle's XML schema work, defining the canonical form of a posted journal entry.
The information gap between trading parties and the cost it imposes on the economy.
The Ledgerism Brief acquired the ledgerism.net domain in June 2026 to preserve Boyle's writing and to publish current editorial coverage of the accounting profession. The two are kept separate. This archive is a static restoration. Current editorial content lives at the root of the site, served by a separate publication system, and covers CPA practice, audit, M&A quality of earnings, tax planning, forensic accounting, and the accounting treatment of digital assets.
Original Boyle copyright is acknowledged. No editorial changes have been made to the restored material. Anyone wishing to discuss the restoration may write to editor@ledgerism.net.