totally contrived example of encapsulating Rails stuff behind the AR model

account.rb

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base

  def invalidate!
    update_attributes(:enabled => false)
  end

end

account_standing.rb

# assume this lives in some lib/ dir

class AccountStanding

  def initialize(account)
    @account = account
  end

  def enforce_good!
    @account.invalidate! if  @account.something_bad?
  end

end