Sending the books to the accounting system
MOTION writes the day's journal into a folder and the accounting system picks it up — nothing listens, and nothing is exposed.
This is the arrangement a council's network people will agree to: traffic goes out, never in. It is also why the Hand-off screen exists, because a folder full of files looks identical whether the accounting system is importing them nightly or stopped in March.
What the screen tells you
- Days in the last fortnight that were never sent.
- Files that went out and were never confirmed by the other end.
- Every run, with how many lines went and who sent it.
Confirmation from the other end
When the import succeeds, the accounting system drops a file of the same name with .ok on the end into the receipt folder. MOTION reads it on the next run and marks that day confirmed. It is the smallest thing the other end can do, and a site that will not open a port will happily let a scheduled task write a file.
Until a receipt folder is agreed, every run stays "sent, not confirmed". That is the honest state — MOTION can say what it sent, but not that anything received it.