The main accounting system of CTTE is on a public ledger. This means that when you enter a transaction against someone the details are recorded on a single, shared and centralised ledger. Each transaction record consists of the following data: seller, buyer, seller’s exchange, buyer’s exchange, description, amount, levy and date. While each record records the value of what was provided by the seller (or received by the buyer), it does not mean that the buyer is obligated to the seller. The buyer is obligated to the community instead. Your private statement of account is generated from the public ledger, which shows the sales and purchases you have made with other CES users either in CTTE or in other exchange groups. The public ledger also reveals your overall trading details to other users.

The Talent Exchange, however, also allows you to create private ledgers where you can record transactions with single other users. Transaction records in private ledgers contain more or less the same information as records in the public ledger, but the ‘amount’ field always represents the value received or given between you and the single other user, not between you and ‘the community’ as with public ledger entries. There is also no levy.

When you create a private ledger with someone it will also appear in the other user’s list of private ledgers. In other words, when you create a ledger recording hours given, the other side will see a record of hours received.

Some examples will illustrate:

  • You are spending time looking after someone’s children and just want to record how many hours you spend doing so. You might or might not be recompensed for those hours later. When you stop recording your service, you can take note of the total number of hours and then delete the ledger.
  • You are providing another with sessions of your treatment modality in exchange for sessions of their treatment modality. This helps you keep a record of what you have given and what you have received.
  • You are teaching someone how to build a website in exchange for cleaning services. You record your hours so that you know how many hours of cleaning you are owed. When your house gets cleaned the cleaner will record their hours until the balance reaches zero.

To use the private ledger feature, log into your CTTE account and then select Record Hours in the ‘Quick Actions’ box in the left-hand column of the home page (found under ‘Seller Actions’). Select the other user and then enter a description of what you provided and the number of hours given. That will start your private ledger with that user. On entering it, the record will appear in the list of your private ledgers below. If your next entry is the same user, it will not create a new ledger but will add to the number of hours you have already given to the particular user.

In this way you can record the hours you give to the users in your list. If they record hours they give to you in return, the balance of hours between you and the user will be shown.

When your balance with the user reaches zero again, you can either leave the record and use it for another round of giving and receiving, or delete it if you are not going to give or receive any more hours with the user.

The private ledger feature is entirely for your private convenience. There are no cumulative statistics showing the amount of private trading in the CTTE and no one else can see your private transactions.