What is a subsidiary ledger?

A subsidiary ledger is a detailed book that rolls up to one account in the general ledger. Customer wallets are the usual case: thousands of balances, one control account. The general ledger holds the total. The subsidiary holds who owns which part. They must add up.

How does a subsidiary ledger work?

You post customer activity on the wallet. You also keep a control balance that should equal the sum of those wallets. A deposit credits a wallet and the control. A payout reverses both. The bank sees the control, or the omnibus behind it. The subsidiary answers “whose money.”

Subsidiary ledger vs general ledger

The general ledger is the company’s own accounts. A subsidiary is a breakdown of one of those accounts. Mixing wallet-level rows into the company book makes statements unreadable. Leaving wallets without a control account makes the omnibus impossible to prove.

What if they disagree?

Someone posted one side and not the other, or rounded, or used two currencies as one. That break is a recon item. Do not “fix” it by editing a wallet. Post the missing leg or reverse the bad one.

In Blnk, customer wallets live in ledgers you create. The control pot is an internal balance in the general ledger. Reconcile the pot to the bank, then prove the wallets still sum to the pot.