Checkout Policy

What It Models

A checkout policy brings together the financial and processing choices for a sale. It supplies the Accounting unit, currency, tender arrangements, invoicing choices and products used for additional charges. Defaults provide fallback policy selection. Interim tax zones remain a facet of this concept while their ownership is unresolved.

Identity and Attributes

Each policy has a stable readable key. Financial references point to Accounting records and are checked when the policy is saved. Creation supplies defaults for omitted settings; replacement sends the complete record with its read version.

Relationships

Stores each select a policy, while checkouts and orders retain their own references. Pricing and promotion previews use its financial context. Existing references can prevent removal.

Invariants

Default policies must remain active. Orders preserve the relevant processing settings at placement, so later configuration edits do not alter that snapshot. Currency support is validated by the service rather than a database relationship to Accounting.

How It Is Stored and Shared

Configuration owns policies, defaults and interim tax zones. Other Commerce modules read them in process. Accounting remains responsible for the referenced financial records. These records have no declared custom-field capability, historical change feed or published change events.

Open Design Questions

An Accounting connection failure permits an unchecked merchant-account save and logs the warning without displaying it. Tax ownership and authority to set or remove protection still need product decisions.