balancing out more than two accounts simultaneously ?

[sandys]

hi,
pretty cool work btw !

quick question - is it possible to balance out more than 2 accounts simultaneously.

for e.g. let's say a debit entry from customer_1 and a credit entry into merchant_1_principal and merchant_1_interest.

this is a very common situation when you pay loan installments - some part of what you pay goes into the principal and some part goes into paying off the interest. e.g. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/on-a-mortgage-whats-the-difference-between-my-principal-and-interest-payment-and-my-total-monthly-payment-en-1941/

im wondering how would one do something like that ?

P.S. it could be more. usually the payment you do goes into interest, principal, homeowners insurance, etc

[pgr0ss]

It isn't really supported today. Right now, you can do this by creating multiple transfers at the same time with pgledger_create_transfers. You can find examples in the multi-currency file, such as:

pgledger/examples/multi-currency.sql.out

Lines 59 to 67 in 821d7a9

	SELECT * FROM pgledger_create_transfers(
	(:'user2_usd_id',:'liquidity_usd_id', '10.00'),
	(:'liquidity_eur_id',:'user2_eur_id', '9.26')
	);
	id | from_account_id | to_account_id | amount | created_at | event_at
	---------------------------------+---------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+------------------------------+------------------------------
	pglt_01K398HBRVF32SJYYA28D1SVZQ | pgla_01K398HBRHF4QR3Q0FA0CGQ63P | pgla_01K398HBRTEM1AKBGQST5CE59Y | 10.00 | 2025-08-22 16:07:09.85124+00 | 2025-08-22 16:07:09.85124+00
	pglt_01K398HBRWE54AKNHNMS86T4ZX | pgla_01K398HBRTFV4S933PK9QSVS0Y | pgla_01K398HBRJF25VR8M0MT6BSFKB | 9.26 | 2025-08-22 16:07:09.85124+00 | 2025-08-22 16:07:09.85124+00
	(2 rows)

The downside is you get 2 transfers each with 2 entries instead of 1 transfer with 4 entries (or in your case, 1 transfer with 3 entries).

One feature planned for the future which will help is transfer-level metadata. That way, the 2 transfers can at least share common metadata, making it more clear they are linked.

Longer term, we could support arbitrarily many entries for a transfer. The pgledger_entries already supports it. The main thing that doesn't is pgledger_transfers has from_account_id and to_account_id for simplicity, but those could be removed and from/to could be queried from entries (although it would be an array for each instead of a single value).

[sandys]

That way, the 2 transfers can at least share common metadata, making it

more clear they are linked. Correct. This is what would be useful since we can then potentially rollback. Or in an idempotent situation...can have a rollback transaction. I think potentially what you might want to do is consider having transaction id in a different table and the transaction data in a different table. So potentially a single transaction has multiple entries. Possibly cleaner. Some transactions being treated differently based on metadata might have long term maintainability implications

…

On Thu, 9 Oct, 2025, 06:22 Paul Gross, ***@***.***> wrote: *pgr0ss* left a comment (pgr0ss/pgledger#81) <#81 (comment)> It isn't really supported today. Right now, you can do this by creating multiple transfers at the same time with pgledger_create_transfers. You can find examples in the multi-currency file, such as: https://github.com/pgr0ss/pgledger/blob/821d7a90fc8a78ba06671f8ca868f51e6b53b3b1/examples/multi-currency.sql.out#L59-L67 The downside is you get 2 transfers each with 2 entries instead of 1 transfer with 4 entries (or in your case, 1 transfer with 3 entries). One feature planned for the future which will help is transfer-level metadata. That way, the 2 transfers can at least share common metadata, making it more clear they are linked. Longer term, we could support arbitrarily many entries for a transfer. The pgledger_entries already supports it. The main thing that doesn't is pgledger_transfers has from_account_id and to_account_id for simplicity, but those could be removed and from/to could be queried from entries (although it would be an array for each instead of a single value). — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#81 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAASYU65QSCDVTC4HQGLG2L3WWWS7AVCNFSM6AAAAACIUPMFY6VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTGOBTGY3TQMRRGE> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[pgr0ss]

I think potentially what you might want to do is consider having
transaction id in a different table and the transaction data in a different
table. So potentially a single transaction has multiple entries. Possibly
cleaner.

This is true today between pgledger_transfers and pgledger_entries.