Bi-temporality
The ability of a ledger to track both when an event was effective and when it was recorded. This allows ledgers to restate or correct entries without overwriting history, supporting accurate audits, historical reconstruction, and compliant reporting in programmable or distributed systems.
Why it Matters
Bi-temporality is essential for maintaining financial integrity in modern ledger systems. Without it, correcting errors or restating transactions would require overwriting historical records, making it impossible to audit what actually happened versus what was later discovered or corrected.
In practice, this matters for several critical use cases:
- Regulatory compliance: Financial regulations often require organizations to show both the original state of records and any subsequent corrections, preserving a complete audit trail.
- Distributed systems: When events arrive out of order or are delayed across network partitions, bi-temporality allows systems to record transactions with their true effective dates while maintaining an accurate log of when information was actually received.
- Dispute resolution: When investigating discrepancies or fraud, teams need to reconstruct exactly what the ledger showed at any point in time, not just the corrected current state.
By separating effective time from recording time, bi-temporal ledgers provide both accuracy and accountability so that you can restate the past without overwriting it.
