Features of Incomplete Records

Records may be incomplete because only some transactions are recorded — as with small shopkeepers

such as grocers and vendors — or because a large organisation's records are damaged or lost due to

a natural calamity, theft or fire. The main features of incomplete records are:

• (a) It is an unsystematic method of recording transactions.
• (b) Usually only cash transactions and personal accounts are properly maintained; there is little or no information about revenues and gains, expenses and losses, or assets and liabilities.
• (c) The owner's personal transactions may also get mixed into the cash book.
• (d) Different firms keep records to suit their own convenience and needs, so the accounts of different firms are not comparable for lack of uniformity.
• (e) To ascertain profit or loss or any other figure, the necessary information has to be collected from original vouchers — sales invoices, purchase invoices and the like — so dependence on such source documents is unavoidable. …