---
title: Why finance is record-only
description: Why ChowChirp records payments, tax and filings instead of performing them, what that protects you from, and what would have to be true before that changes.
order: 5
updated: 2026-09-16
keywords: record-only, payments, SST, filing, accountant, general ledger
---

ChowChirp's finance screens plan, record and export. They do not move money, file tax returns or submit statutory filings. This is a design decision, not a gap we forgot to fill.

## What record-only means

- A **payment run** is planned against your cash floor and approved with a second factor. You then pay in your bank, and record the settlement here. The validator rejects any payment mode other than record-only.
- The **SST period** is assembled from the tax lines on every bill and sale and shown with its evidence. Filing on MySST is your accountant's act.
- **e-Invoice** records are kept with their identifiers. Consolidated submissions can be sent where a MyInvois connection is configured; everything else is a record for your files, and the screen says so.
- **Payroll** produces bank-file and payslip previews you download. EPF, SOCSO, EIS and PCB are filed through their own portals and recorded here as done.

## Why

**Your accountant keeps the ledger.** ChowChirp is operational finance: what you owe, what you have, what it cost, and whether the month can close. The general ledger, the filings and the professional responsibility stay with a licensed accountant. We export to them in layouts that import cleanly.

**A wrong automatic payment is expensive.** An automatic bank transfer built on an unmatched bill, a mis-read invoice or a duplicate is real money gone. A recorded payment that a person made in the bank, after seeing the cash floor, is a decision with a name on it.

**Statutory submissions carry penalties.** An e-Invoice or a tax return submitted by software with the wrong figure is your liability, not the software's. Until a live connection has been proven on a reference outlet with the authority's own validation on record, we would rather prepare the figures and let you submit.

**Honesty on screen.** Every finance screen distinguishes recorded from sent from validated. A product that pays or files automatically has to collapse those into one word, and that word is usually wrong.

## What it protects

Separation of duties (the person who approves is not the system that pays), an audit trail that shows a human decision at every money boundary, and a month-end close that can be locked because every item has evidence.

## What would change it

A live bank instruction or filing connection will be added only with a proven adapter, the authority's or bank's own confirmation recorded as evidence, an explicit owner opt-in per outlet, and the same second-factor approval as today. Until then, the screens will keep saying _record_.

## Related

- [Record a supplier payment](/docs/how-to/record-a-supplier-payment)
- [e-Invoice in ChowChirp](/docs/explanation/e-invoice-in-chowchirp)