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[DRAFT] General Ledgers Act

https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=487777

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[DRAFT] General Ledgers Act

PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 7:38 am
by Servilis
General Ledgers Act

A resolution to enact uniform standards that protect workers, consumers, and the general public.

Category: Regulation Area of Effect: Legal Reform (for now) by: Servilis

The World Assembly,

Recognizing the importance of a General Ledger in recording transactions of a business and other financial areas of it as well.

Shocked by the lack of attention towards the unreliable templates General Ledgers use.

Determined to make the learning of General Ledger use, as well as the use of it in practical areas much easier,

Hereby enacts the following:

1. For the purposes of this resolution,

a. Defining "General Ledger" as a documentation and recording of transactions a business has involvement in.

b. Defining "template" as a preset for a document


2. Defining the regulations as follows :

a. General Ledger templates must be user-friendly, being easy to navigate and easily readable, (in other words, placing columns and features in a way that seems as though the creator made the columns as they went along would be considered user-unfriendly and hard to navigate)

b. General Ledgers should all have the same features, rather than be separated into different types of Ledgers, for example, the existence of Cash Payment Journals, Cash Receipts Journals and other forms of extra documentation of transactions.

c. Document names must be recognizable and easy to remember. (e.g. a Cheque could be "CHE")

d. Details of a transaction should be included. (The details imply what sort of transaction took place, e.g. purchase, sales, loan, renting, etc.)

e. The Date of the Transaction should be included.

f. The cost of the Transaction should also be included, in either the same column, or in two different columns representing funds earned and funds lost.

g. The means of transaction should be included, (I.e. Was it payed for with a Cheque, physical funds, debit, credit, etc.)

h. Any other necessary columns (such as Cost of Sales, etc.) should be included in the General Ledger, as opposed to being kept in a separate ledger (as stated in 3.b.)

General Ledgers Act

A resolution to enact regulations on the use of financial concepts.

Category: Regulation Area of Effect: Finances Proposed by: Servilis

The World Assembly,

Recognizing the importance of a General Ledger in recording transactions of a business and other financial areas of it as well.

Shocked by the lack of attention towards the unreliable templates General Ledgers use.

Determined to make the learning of General Ledger use, as well as the use of it in practical areas much easier,

Hereby enacts the following:

1. For the purposes of this resolution,

a. Defining "Simplification of Economics" as an effort to summarize and/or simplify an Economic System/Structure.

b. Defining "Simplification of Finances" as an effort to summarize Financial Concepts.

c. Defining "Financial Concept" as a concept that is primarily found in the topic of Finance.


2. Member States shall not be penalized for an inability to abide by the regulations, but rather have their General Ledger system rejected, forcing them to try again.


3. Defining the regulations as follows :

a. General Ledgers templates must be user-friendly, being easy to navigate and easily readable.

b. General Ledgers should all have the same features, rather than be separated into different types of Ledgers.

c. Document names must be recognizable and easy to remember. (I.e. a Cheque could be "CHE")

d. Details of a transaction should be included. (The details imply what sort of transaction took place, e.g. purchase, sales, loan, renting, etc.)

e. The Date of the Transaction should be included.

f. The cost of the Transaction should also be included, in either the same column, or in two different columns representing funds earned and funds lost.

g. The means of transaction should be included, (I.e. Was it payed for with a Cheque, physical funds, debit, credit, etc.)

h. Any other necessary columns (such as Cost of Sales, etc.) should be included in the General Ledger, as opposed to being kept in a separate ledger (as stated in 3.b.)

PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 7:39 am
by Servilis
As necessary, if anyone would like to point out any errors I made or any help with formatting that'd be great.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:57 am
by Cretox State
Welcome to the General Assembly! A few quick comments:
  1. The purpose of a definition is to establish terminology in order to legislate on something. Don’t define things if you don’t intend to use those definitions. Outlining the purpose of your proposal is what the preamble is for.
  2. On that note, you should definitely define critical terms being used, such as “General Ledger” and “templates”.
  3. Try to avoid using catch-all phrases like “should all have the same features“ and “must be recognizable and easy to remember.” What constitutes “easy to remember”? What makes something “easy to navigate”?
  4. i.e. and e.g. are not interchangeable. Make sure you know what the language you’re using means.
  5. It’s often helpful to research a proposal topic by looking at existing legislation on that topic. Do real-world laws exist that govern this topic? If so, what kind of laws? How are they written? Why are they written in that way? If not, why not?
  6. Expanding on the above point, why does this topic need a resolution on it? Are you micromanaging unnecessarily? For example, why does your draft need to regulate how many columns a specific type of ledger needs to devote to a specific piece of information?

PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 9:33 am
by Tinhampton
Servilis wrote:
General Ledgers Act

A resolution to enact regulations on the use of financial concepts.

Category: Regulation Area of Effect: Finances Proposed by: Servilis


[...]

1. For the purposes of this resolution,

a. Defining "Simplification of Economics" as an effort to summarize and/or simplify an Economic System/Structure.

b. Defining "Simplification of Finances" as an effort to summarize Financial Concepts.

c. Defining "Financial Concept" as a concept that is primarily found in the topic of Finance.

The Regulation/Finances category does not exist and you have defined three terms that you do not use anywhere else in your legislation.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:02 am
by Flying Eagles
Also, Clause 2 makes it very easy for anyone who wants to ignore this resolution to do so

PostPosted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:45 am
by Grays Harbor
“You want to ... micromanage how many columns are in a book? Really? I do not see any value in this other than legislation legislating for the sake of legislation. Just an FYI, information in a ledger should be now and always *that which is necessary*, not some one-size-fits-nobody mish-mash which will likely not be of use to anybody.”

PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 3:08 am
by Servilis
Cretox State wrote:Welcome to the General Assembly! A few quick comments:
  1. The purpose of a definition is to establish terminology in order to legislate on something. Don’t define things if you don’t intend to use those definitions. Outlining the purpose of your proposal is what the preamble is for.
  2. On that note, you should definitely define critical terms being used, such as “General Ledger” and “templates”.
  3. Try to avoid using catch-all phrases like “should all have the same features“ and “must be recognizable and easy to remember.” What constitutes “easy to remember”? What makes something “easy to navigate”?
  4. i.e. and e.g. are not interchangeable. Make sure you know what the language you’re using means.
  5. It’s often helpful to research a proposal topic by looking at existing legislation on that topic. Do real-world laws exist that govern this topic? If so, what kind of laws? How are they written? Why are they written in that way? If not, why not?
  6. Expanding on the above point, why does this topic need a resolution on it? Are you micromanaging unnecessarily? For example, why does your draft need to regulate how many columns a specific type of ledger needs to devote to a specific piece of information?


On your last point. The reason I made this is because in South Africa, our General Ledgers are a mess, but nobody even cares to fix it.
The way documents are named is confusing and because Economics is a subject, we have to practice using General Ledgers.

PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 3:14 am
by Servilis
Grays Harbor wrote:“You want to ... micromanage how many columns are in a book? Really? I do not see any value in this other than legislation legislating for the sake of legislation. Just an FYI, information in a ledger should be now and always *that which is necessary*, not some one-size-fits-nobody mish-mash which will likely not be of use to anybody.”

The thing is, the whole point of my resolution is to make it easier for businesses to record transactions, as General Ledgers often require you to remember every aspect of how they work. I can't remember any names for the documents column.

PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 3:28 am
by Separatist Peoples
Ooc: there is no Finance subcategory.

PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:06 am
by Bananaistan
OOC: I think that your conception of what a general ledger is does not match up to RL practice in either manual or computerised bookkeeping and does not appear to account for the standard double-entry bookkeeping system. In a manual system, a general ledger records summaries of transactions from the books of first entry. It is merely a mid stage between day books and financial accounts. In a computerised system, it will generally be a list of all transactions, each at a minimum having a date, description, amount and entered on either the debit or credit side. There's no "means of transaction", extraneous columns or document names.

Leaving that aside, what's the international utility of any bookkeeping standard? Any sort of half way reasonable country will have its own requirements for businesses to keep proper books of account for taxation and company law purposes and wouldn't care what the particular formula or template is so long as the financial position of the business can be easily established, IE accounts in the statutory format can be drawn up.

PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:51 am
by Keswickholt
(OOC)
Whilst I can see where you're coming from with this Idea, it appears that whilst an easier way to record data such as Finances would be greatly appreciated by most, from a legal standpoint it would have to be heavily regulated as to;
who has access?
what level of access would someone need to see all the data?
What Safeguards are in place?
What is in place to prevent fraudulent use of the Ledger?
What is in place to prevent or detect Money Laundering Operations?
What data protection regulations are in place?


It would then need a regulatory body to govern access and data on the ledger and to Investigate any breaches of the regulations needed to protect the data.
Would this be for the WA to regulate or for individual Nations to regulate?

In the UK we have the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) who regulate the Financial Sector and we also have the Financial Ombudsman when the FCA cannot deal with the breach of regulations.

PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 1:11 pm
by Foril
I don’t think this is something the WA should regulate. I’m opposed to this.

PostPosted: Fri Jul 03, 2020 3:46 pm
by Kenmoria
“This seems like an issue that can’t really be properly addressed. Your current draft offers standards which, though undeniably helpful, would already be implemented in a reasonable member state. Furthermore, unlike, for example, a ban on torture, there isn’t really much of an issue if a member state decides to take the unreasonable route.

On the other hand, going any more precise and having strict WA-level regulations would fall into micromanagement, ultimately harming global businesses by forcing needless administrative changes. In conclusion, I currently can’t see an effective way to develop the draft.”

(OOC: On another note, the current draft should be unspoilered in the opening post; this makes it easier to find and refer to.)
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