Glossary

Short definitions for the terms used across the Ledgerline documentation. Where a term has its own page, the definition links to it.

A to C

Account

A balance in one currency inside a ledger. It has a normal balance of debit or credit. See Ledgers and accounts.

Available balance

What can be spent now: the posted balance minus pending outflows. See Account balances.

Business day

Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays of the rail's home calendar. Cut-offs and settlement times are counted in business days. See Payment rails.

Counterparty

An external person or business you pay. A counterparty has one or more bank accounts and is screened against sanctions lists. See Counterparties and screening.

Credit

An entry that increases a credit-normal account and decreases a debit-normal one. Every transaction has credits equal to its debits.

Cut-off

The time of day after which a payment waits for the next business day. For ACH and SEPA it is 15:00 UTC, and for domestic wires 18:00 UTC.

D to I

Debit

An entry that increases a debit-normal account and decreases a credit-normal one.

Entry

One debit or credit against one account. Entries are immutable once posted. See Transactions and entries.

Event

A record of something that happened, such as payout.paid, delivered to webhook endpoints. See Webhooks overview.

FX clearing account

A system account that sits between the two legs of a currency conversion so each leg balances in its own currency. See Multi-currency ledgers.

Idempotency key

A unique value sent in the Idempotency-Key header so a retried request has the same effect as one request. Kept for 24 hours. See Idempotency keys.

K to P

KYB

Know Your Business: the verification of the company that holds the organization. Required before live keys can be created. See Business verification (KYB).

Ledger

A container for related accounts. Transactions can only involve accounts in the same ledger.

Micro-deposits

Two small deposits, of $0.01 to $0.99, sent to a bank account so the owner can prove they have access to it.

Minor unit

The smallest unit of a currency, such as a cent. All API amounts are integers in minor units. The yen has none.

Normal balance

The side, debit or credit, that increases an account's balance. Assets are debit-normal. Money held for others is credit-normal.

Organization

Your company's tenant in Ledgerline. It owns keys, plans, team members and a data region.

Payout

A payment from one of your accounts to a counterparty's bank account over a rail. See Creating and tracking payouts.

Pending balance

The net effect of entries in transactions that are not yet posted.

Posted

The final state of a transaction. Posted entries cannot be changed, only reversed.

Prenote

A zero-dollar test entry used to check that a bank account exists.

R to W

Rail

A payment network, such as ACH, wire, RTP, FedNow, SEPA or Faster Payments.

Reconciliation

Matching the entries in your ledger with the lines on your bank statement. See Reconciliation.

Restricted key

An API key limited to the scopes you choose. Its prefix is ll_live_rk_ or ll_test_rk_. See Restricted keys and scopes.

Return

A payment sent back by the receiving bank after it was delivered. See Returns and failed payouts.

Reversal

A new transaction that cancels a posted one by writing the opposite entries.

Sandbox

The test environment with simulated banks. See The sandbox.

Scope

A named permission on a restricted key, such as payouts:write.

Spread

The difference between the mid-market rate and the rate Ledgerline gives you. It is the only FX charge. See FX quotes and conversions.

Statement

A fixed monthly record of a ledger. See Statements and exports.

Virtual account

A routing and account number that Ledgerline maps to one of your ledger accounts, so incoming payments identify themselves.

Void

Releasing a pending transaction so it never posts.

Webhook endpoint

An HTTPS URL on your server that receives events. Each endpoint has its own signing secret that starts with whsec_.