{"id":4230,"date":"2022-05-11T08:43:52","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T06:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ban.co.za\/ban-clients\/?page_id=4230"},"modified":"2025-11-06T11:26:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:26:01","slug":"what-is-bookkeeping","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ban.co.za\/ban-clients\/what-is-bookkeeping\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Bookkeeping all About?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WHAT IS BOOKKEEPING ALL ABOUT? <\/span><\/h4>\n

Traditionally, bookkeeping<\/a> is the systematic recording or data capture from source documents of each and every financial transaction of a business into \u201cvarious books of original entry\u201d known as \u201csubsidiary ledgers\u201d which is then consolidated into the \u201cmain book\u201d of account called a \u201cgeneral ledger\u201d using a method called the double-entry system.<\/p>\n

Over time, bookkeeping has become more complex compared to several decades ago with the added necessity of bookkeepers being required to have competent knowledge of certain limited areas of tax law, such as Value Added Tax (VAT) and, where the bookkeeper is also responsible for the business\u2019s payroll, Income Tax as it relates to the employer\u2019s taxation of employees amongst several other laws related to payroll.<\/p>\n

Not only is it problematic for bookkeepers to stay on top of continuous changes to tax law, it would be unjust to expect this high level of skill from someone unqualified and untrained, only to run the risk of making a significant and hugely costly tax mistake. By appointing an outsourced accountant<\/a> within the national Business Accounting Network franchise, a smaller and medium business can mitigate against these types of risks.<\/p>\n

Here we\u2019ll unwrap some of the detail about how a business\u2019s main financial transactions are recorded in the traditional bookkeeping manner which is still used to this day, including the latest bookkeeping and accounting software programmes.<\/p>\n

Subsidiary Ledgers<\/strong>
\nMost businesses today use software programmes to capture their financial transactions as opposed to yesteryear\u2019s method of manually recording transactions into the subsidiary ledgers. Given that, these software programmes use the traditional bookkeeping method and the double entry system of bookkeeping, meaning that the subsidiary ledgers are all built into the software programme making it difficult for a novice to identify the \u201cseparate subsidiary ledgers\u201d as all the transactions automatically feed into the main or general ledger.<\/p>\n

There are several important books of original entry or better known as subsidiary ledgers, the most important of those being:<\/p>\n