Enterprise Finance Workspace

Overview

Problem

Core users

• Finance operators working AP, AR, GL, and cash workflows
• Finance managers reviewing reports and exceptions
• Admins managing roles, permissions, departments, and users
• Auditors reviewing historical actions and data changes

MVP scope

• Dense workspace UI with modules, tables, filters, command palette, saved views, and drilldowns
• Service-layer architecture for AP, AR, GL, Cash, Reporting, Admin, Notifications, and Audit
• Organization-scoped records
• Role-based permissions
• Saved view metadata and report configurations
• Audit logs for important actions
• Import/export actions for core tables

Non-goals

• Do not build a full accounting engine in the first pass
• Do not support every ERP integration initially
• Do not make visual polish more important than workflow speed
• Do not hardcode UI mock data once the service layer exists

Core system components

• Workspace shell with module navigation and command palette
• Accounts Payable module
• Accounts Receivable module
• General Ledger module
• Cash module
• Reporting module
• Admin, Notifications, and Audit Logs modules
• Shared service layer and repository/data access layer
• Saved views and user preferences service

Suggested architecture

• Frontend: dense workspace UI with modules, tables, filters, command palette, saved views, drilldowns, and export actions.
• Backend: service-layer architecture with domain modules for AP, AR, GL, Cash, Reporting, Admin, Notifications, and Audit.
• Database: Postgres/Supabase with organization-scoped records, role-based permissions, audit trails, saved view metadata, and report configurations.
• Auth: organization membership plus RBAC permissions enforced in both UI and backend.
• Workers: background jobs for imports, exports, report generation, notification delivery, and audit processing.
• External APIs: future ERP, bank feed, document, and email integrations.

Data model

• Organization: id, name, plan, createdAt
• User: id, organizationId, email, name, status
• Role: id, organizationId, name
• Permission: id, key, description
• Vendor: id, organizationId, name, status
• Customer: id, organizationId, name, status
• Invoice: id, organizationId, vendorId, customerId, amount, dueDate, status
• Payment: id, organizationId, invoiceId, amount, postedAt, method
• JournalEntry: id, organizationId, date, memo, status
• Account: id, organizationId, code, name, type
• Department: id, organizationId, name
• SavedView: id, organizationId, userId, module, filters, columns, sort
• AuditLog: id, organizationId, actorId, action, entityType, entityId, diff, createdAt
• ReportDefinition: id, organizationId, name, module, config
• Notification: id, organizationId, userId, type, payload, readAt

API design

• GET /api/modules/:module/records - list module records with filters
• POST /api/ap/invoices - create AP invoice
• POST /api/ar/invoices - create AR invoice
• POST /api/gl/journal-entries - create journal entry
• GET /api/reports/:id/run - run a report definition
• POST /api/saved-views - save a table/filter view
• GET /api/audit-logs - search audit history
• POST /api/imports - start a CSV import job
• POST /api/exports - start an export job

Key technical challenges

• Permission modeling across modules and actions
• Dense UX without clutter
• Auditability and immutable financial event history
• Report performance on large tables
• Multi-tenant data isolation
• Saved views and user preferences
• Import/export workflows with validation and rollback

Tradeoffs

• Use shared module patterns so AP, AR, GL, Cash, and Reporting do not become separate apps.
• Prefer server-side filtering/pagination for finance tables instead of loading everything client-side.
• Make saved views first-class because power users repeat the same workflows daily.
• Keep service methods explicit even when it creates more files, because financial behavior should be traceable.

Security considerations

• RBAC with route, action, and record-level checks.
• Row-level security or strict organization scoping in every query.
• Audit logs for creates, updates, deletes, imports, exports, approvals, and permission changes.
• Immutable financial event history where possible.
• Export permission checks and export audit records.
• Avoid leaking one organization's data through filters, saved views, or report configs.

Scaling path

• Start with core modules and shared UI/data patterns.
• Add background import/export and report workers.
• Add materialized report tables for expensive reports.
• Add workflow approvals and notifications.
• Add external integrations and API access.
• Add tenant-level performance isolation if organization size diverges.

Observability

• Audit logs visible to admins and stored immutably.
• Metrics for slow filters, slow reports, import failures, export counts, and permission denials.
• Trace IDs from UI actions through service-layer calls.
• Dashboards for report queue health and notification delivery.

Future features

• Approval workflows
• Bank feed imports
• ERP integrations
• Advanced report builder
• Scheduled exports
• Anomaly detection for finance records

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