ELI5
Accounting software is a system (usually a website) that allows you to record all incomes and expenses of a company.
Key Takeaways
- An accounting software is a type of system that allows you to manage all finances of a company.
- It also allows you to manage your company’s finances by sending invoices and collecting payments, and generating financial reports.
- Some popular options are Xero and Quickbooks.
What is accounting software?
Accounting software is a technology system that helps accountants to record, categorise and manage all financial transactions of a company.
Old accounting software stored data on mainframe computers but newer accounting softwares is hosted on the “cloud”. This basically means that your data is stored in a remote server and you don’t need to maintain your own data – that’s the accounting software company’s job.
What features does an accounting software have?
Accounting softwares typically have the following features:
- Add income or expense transactions
- Add journal entries
- Do reconciliation between transactions in the accounting software and cash and bank account statements
- Upload and keep a record of receipts and invoices
- Create invoices
- Automatically send invoices to clients
- Integrate with banks to automatically add transactions to save time with data entry
- Generate financial statements