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Knowledge base

PMTA knowledge base›Mechanism§ 12.2

How an accounting record is structured

critical

accounting record model
Record types and field composition

The general structure of accounting records: the record type — d delivery, b bounce, t temporary error, tq queue temporary error, r reception, f complaint, rb and rs — a bounce and a status that arrived by mail — and fields whose set is configurable. By default only d and b are written.

The record type decides what the line is about, the field set decides what is in it. Both are set in the accounting block, and both affect size: there are as many delivery records as delivered recipients.

The main trap is expecting temporary errors in default accounting. Without an explicit records only deliveries and bounces are written: there will be no string of deferrals in the file, and “the message took three days” cannot be reconstructed from accounting.
What the Hub does. It reads the accounting stream in full: the webhook carries d, b, rb, t and f records, and all the analytics are built on them.
Recommended values

Record types:

Type What the line is about By default
d delivery yes
b bounce yes
t, tq temporary error of a recipient, of a queue no
r message reception no
f complaint no
rb, rs a bounce and a status that arrived by mail no
The record types and the “only d and b” default come from the manual (§ 12.2). The table is ours.
Example configuration
<acct-file /var/log/pmta/acct.csv>
    records d,b,t    record-fields d *,timeFirstAttempt
</acct-file>
Record types are listed with the records line, the field set with record-fields for each type.
yellow — — directive names, blue — blocks. They are highlighted the same way in the text of the card.
Compatibility
PowerMTA 6.0
described in the manual of this version · platform: any
The vendor does not state the first version for every directive — there is no note here. The name also appears in the 5.0 edition of the manual.
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Related entries

3 relations

Does not work without

Delivered — the record everything is counted byThe accounting record in which the result is visible. § 12.2.1

Works together with

Temporary failureThe accounting record in which the result is visible. § 12.2.3

Where you can see it

The telemetry contractA related mechanism: they work together. § 12.2

Referenced from

CSV or JSON — chosen by the file extension, not by a directiveThe same set of records written in two ways: that entry is about their composition, this one about how they land in the file. § 12.1.2A summary of the accounting filesThe mechanism the command works with. § 12.4

How to check on the node
See which record types the node writes:
cut -d, -f1 /var/log/pmta/acct-*.csv | sort | uniq -c
The first column is the record type; whatever is missing from the count, the node does not write.
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What else to read

3 articles

◇What the node tells about itself and through which channelsSeven observation surfaces: the web monitor, the console in four formats, the log, accounting, accounting search, metrics and export to external analytics.◇The telemetry contractOne block describes the accounting output in full: which record types, which fields, where they go, how files rotate and what gets anonymized.◇Exposing metrics to a collectorExposing the node’s metrics to an external collector in its format.

In the Hub
Cost of a mistake
safe: a wrong value breaks nothing
Scenarios
Troubleshoot deliverability · Collect telemetry
Priority
critical