Q. Fundamental manual accounting system?

Those planning on a public accounting career must do more than just learn accounting. To develop the essential skills a broad education background in business and non-business courses is required plus participation in extracurricular activities that promote leadership and communication skills. It is never too early to begin building the skills for long-term success.

The development of the personal computer (PC) in 1976 as well as its widespread use a decade later drastically changed the accounting systems of small and medium-sized businesses. The quality and number of accounting software packages for PCs and the power of PCs quickly increased. Soon medium-sized and small businesses could maintain all accounting functions on a PC. By means of the 1990s the cost of PCs and accounting software packages had decreased significantly accounting software packages had become more user-friendly and computer literacy had increased therefore much that many very small businesses converted from manual to computerized systems. though some small business owners still use manual systems because they are familiar and meet their needs and the persons keeping the records may not be computer literate.

Your knowledge of the fundamental manual accounting system described in these first four chapters enables you to better understand a computerized accounting system. The computer automatically perform some of the steps in the accounting cycle such as posting journal entries to the ledger accounts closing the books and preparing the financial statements. Though if you understand all of the steps in the accounting cycle you will better understand how to use the resulting data in decision making.