Nobody owns the registers once the job gets busy

Register-keeping is everyone's second job, and second jobs are the first thing dropped when the first job catches fire. The cruelty is in the timing: the busy months are the ones generating the most instructions, the most change and the most exposure, so the record thins out at precisely the moment it is accumulating the most value. When the dust settles, the quiet months are documented and the month that will be argued about is a gap.

The fix is ownership that sits outside the storm. When keeping the registers is somebody's actual job, on a monthly rhythm that does not flex with the site's workload, the record stops depending on the team's spare capacity, and the busy months, the ones a final account or a dispute will one day turn on, are the best documented instead of the worst.