Accountability

Accountability is an analysis pattern which models any situation in which accounting or money/time/resources is required. The basic principle is that events in the real world have to logged and accounted for in some way. However, this gets tricky when you consider that some events can be revoked / amended at a later date.

Martin Fowler writes extensively about this analysis pattern in http://www.martinfowler.com/apsupp/accounting.pdf.