It wasn’t long ago that anyone dealing with the accounting requirements of a small, or even quite large, business would have done so using paper ledgers. It wasn’t called “accounting” for nothing.

For many years I sold accounting systems for a living; they were paper-based at first and then very slowly moved to a computer-based system as the necessary software and hardware became more affordable for businesses.

Over time, the accounting function has become much more comprehensive. This is due to the ability, inherent in most accounting software today, to integrate the various accounting functions to see the big picture at once, without having to wait days for reports to be compiled by hand.

It’s all very well for the sales manager to know that his top-performing sales team has booked over $100,000 worth of orders this week, but unless he knows how much it cost to run that sales team, how much the goods and What services are provided have a production cost and what other overheads are involved, your sales figure taken in isolation doesn’t mean much.

If, on the other hand, you can get a real-time impression of the big picture, including a final profit or loss calculation, you can make decisions and act much faster than in the days of paper accounting.

The information, of course, was always available, just not easily accessible.

If we accept that it takes approximately the same amount of time to enter a supplier’s invoice details into the purchase ledger module of a computerized accounting system as it does to enter it into a paper ledger, then line by line , both methods are more or less the same. So why spend time, effort and money installing a computerized accounting system?

The answer, of course, lies in what happens to that information once it’s entered into the system. If you write the details of a purchase invoice in a book, it stays there, in the book. Nobody else knows.

If, on the other hand, you take the same amount of time and enter those same details into an integrated computer-based accounting system, the information is distributed to all areas of the system where it is needed. Management can see the updated expense figure with a click of the mouse or the press of a button. I think most people would agree that it’s more efficient than asking one of your accounting team members to prepare a report by hand.

Accounting software not only reduces the time it takes to keep company-wide accounting data up to date, it also gives employees and management at all levels the information they need in an instant.

The salesperson responding to a customer’s stock inquiry can see if a particular item is in stock without having to walk to the warehouse, the company accountant can see how much cash is due at the end of the month and how much of it be available to pay suppliers.

Accounting software saves time and effort and puts people in control by giving them up-to-date information on which to make important business decisions.