Features of Accounting Software

What good accounting software can do

Accounting software is a program built to record business transactions and turn them, automatically, into books of account and financial statements. Different packages vary in detail, but the important, commonly-found features are broadly the same.

• Company / organisation setup — you first create a company in the software, entering its name, address, financial year, and (where relevant) its GSTIN (GST registration number). All work is then done within that company's data.
• Masters — permanent reference records that are created once and used again and again, such as ledger accounts (e.g. Cash, Bank, a customer, a supplier), stock/inventory items, and tax rates. Masters save you from typing the same details on every transaction.
• Voucher entry — transactions are recorded as vouchers (see the next section), the software's electronic version of a journal entry.
• Automatic ledger posting — entering one voucher updates every account it affects, so the ledgers are always current.
• Inventory / stock management — recording goods received and sold, and showing stock in hand and its value.
• Taxation (GST) — applying the correct GST rate to each item and splitting it into CGST/SGST or IGST automatically.
• Report generation — producing a day book, ledgers, trial balance, profit-and-loss account, balance sheet, and various GST reports on demand.
• Invoicing and printing — creating and printing proper GST tax invoices, receipts, and statements.
• Security — password protection, user accounts with different access rights, and an audit trail that records who entered or changed data. …