Читать книгу Accounting For Dummies - John A. Tracy - Страница 66

Just like you need a constant circulation of blood to live, businesses need a constant flow of paperwork and electronic activity. Even in this age of the internet and the cloud, electronic communication, and computers, a business generates and depends on lots of documentation (either hard paperwork or digitized documents in PDFs). And much of this documentation is used in the accounting process. Placing an order to buy products, selling a product to a customer, determining the earnings of an employee for the month — virtually every business transaction needs some documentation, generally called source documents. When you pay a bill, for example, don’t you want a “hard copy” to examine before you write the check?

Source documents serve as legal evidence of the terms and conditions agreed upon by the business and the other person or organization that it’s dealing with. Both parties receive some kind of source document. For example, for a sale at a cash register, the customer gets a sales receipt, and the business keeps a running record of all the transactions in the register, which can be printed out later if need be.

Clearly, an accounting system needs to standardize the forms and procedures for processing and recording all normal, repetitive transactions and should control the generation and handling of these source documents. From the bookkeeping point of view, these business forms and documents are important because they provide the input information needed for recording transactions in the business’s accounts. Sloppy paperwork leads to sloppy accounting records, and sloppy accounting records just won’t do when the time comes to prepare tax returns and financial statements.

If you’re the owner of a small business, you probably want to check out an office supply store or, better yet, online documentation websites to see the kinds of forms that you can buy right off the shelf or download with the stroke of a key. You can find many of the basic forms and documents that you need for executing and recording business transactions. Also, computer accounting software systems today include templates for most business forms and source documents needed by a business.