Field notes · 05

Check Your Export Without Us

9 September 2026 · 2 min read · Periplus

The most important test of any software you own is what happens on the day we're gone. Here's how to run it now, before you've signed anything.

Your Purser export is the same chain that runs the desk, written to a file: one row per event, each with its seal, each seal carrying the one before it. You don't need us to read it, and you don't need us to check it.

Four steps

1. Export the bundle from the desk. It's a folder of plain files you can open, not a database dump.
2. Run the checker. It walks the rows, recomputes every seal, and stops at the first one that doesn't match.
3. Edit one number, on purpose. Change an amount in any row and run it again. The seal on that row breaks, and so does every seal after it.
4. Put the number back. Every seal matches again.

There's a version of this on the homepage you can run in your browser, with an amount field you're meant to change. The real bundle behaves the same way, only longer.

The round trip

An export that only reads is a souvenir. Yours reloads through an empty database, byte for byte, so the desk you'd rebuild from it is the desk you left.

The outside clock

If you need to show not just what happened but when, Periplus can seal the export in a certificate pack: a timestamp from an authority that isn't us, and a one-file checker. The checker is one file so that whoever checks it in five years doesn't need our software, or us.

What it can't prove

The checker proves the file is the file. If someone entered the wrong amount in good faith, the chain seals the wrong amount in good faith, and the correction sits next to it. Receipts prove what happened. Whether it was wise is still your call.

Ask for a sample bundle and break it on your own laptop. What you find comes back answered in a day, not weeks.

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