The Happy Accountant

I’ve recently been in the position of choosing accounting software, so this has been forefront of my mind.  This is a (by no means exhaustive) list of things to consider (in no particular order). 

price
functionality
ease of use/user friendliness
accounting knowledge
upgradeability
upgrade cost
ongoing support costs
flexibility
does it meet your legal obligations

Some of the duties may be carried out by the Credit Controller, rather than the Sales Ledger clerk, if the company is big enough to have this segregation.  Again, this is only a generic description and some duties may not apply or may have been omitted. 

Match dispatch notes to customer orders
Produce sales invoices
Allocate customer payments to the correct [...]

This is a general list.  Some may not apply to all businesses.  Equally, there may be some things that I have missed off, but may apply, particularly to specific industries.

log all the purchase ledger invoices (either on paper or into the accounts system) that have been received.
match  invoices to the Goods Received Note (GRN) and/or [...]

The whole point of using accounting software is to make your life easier by saving you time and money.  Therefore, if it doesn’t and you can meet your legal requirements without it, you should question whether it’s worth the effort.
It should save you time because:

the whole process of bookkeeping should be faster (although setting up a [...]

In doing a journal, it is important that it is cross referenced properly so that later, if you or your accountant needs to, you can follow the original “logic” for having done the journal.  Accountants refer to this as being able to follow the audit trail.  This applies whether or not you actually have your [...]

A journal is usually used to correct errors that have been made.  The errors must be able to be corrected by means of a double entry, to be able to put it right by journalling.
So, if £500 of sales of square widgets had been incorrectly posted to sales of round widgets, the correcting journal would [...]

I’ve previously blogged about day books and analysing the sales or purchases into appropriate columns.  Depending on your business and grasp of accounting & bookkeeping, you might leave your record keeping at that.  However, to take it to the next step in terms of bookkeeping, a journal is used to take that analysis into the double entry [...]

A journal is used to record any double entries that do not arise from anywhere else (such as sales, purchases, payroll).
The format of a journal is usually:
Date                                             Folio              Debit £   Credit £
Account to be debited                                          X
Account to be credited                                                         X