Refusal record
Informational
A refusal record is the durable evidence that a transaction was evaluated and declined. It captures what was requested, which rule refused it, and the state of the relevant budget or authority at that moment. Refusals are evidence of a working control, which makes them worth recording rather than discarding.
How it works
There are two distinct kinds of refusal, and they produce different evidence. A request rejected at the door — malformed, unauthenticated, addressed to nothing — never becomes an event and generates no record beyond a transport-level error. A request that is well-formed, evaluated against policy, and declined is an event that happened: it has a timestamp, an actor, an amount, a rule, and an outcome. The second kind belongs in the record.
Example
The $80 request that would have exceeded Northwind's mandate is refused. The record shows: agent identifier, requested amount $80, mandate remaining $40, rule applied, timestamp, and outcome. No expense is posted, because no money moved. But when an auditor asks whether the budget control actually functioned during March, this is the answer.
Common questions
Why record something that did not happen?
The refusal happened. The payment did not. Demonstrating that a control operated requires evidence of the times it fired, not only evidence of the transactions it let through.
Does a refusal produce an accounting entry?
No. No value moved, so there is nothing to post. The refusal is recorded as evidence, not as a financial transaction.