Types of accounting systems
Single Ledger System
This system is based on the evolution of the continental journal and was designed approximately in the year 1795, with the purpose of simplifying the work of going from the journal to the ledger, which was achieved by uniting the journal and the ledger into a single book, eliminating in this journal the folio number of the counter accounts, the date and the entry number.
The single ledger journal is the precursor of the columnar or tabular journals. The layout of this book was made up of two parts; the first part was intended for the newspaper and consisted of a ruled identical to the continental newspaper; The second part intended for the ledger consisted of a series of columns to record the values, two of which were used for each of the accounts affected by the operations, one of them to record the debits and another for the credits.
Diary accounts:.
tabular diary
In this journal, the same procedure as the single ledger journal is followed, except that a section is opened with the name "various accounts", in which the corresponding amounts of accounts that are missing spaces that were not assigned special columns, or those whose movement is not constant, are noted.
The single tabular journal system consists of establishing a journal with columns, but without eliminating the general ledger to which the sums of each column were transferred monthly, after analyzing the section of several accounts. The transfer to the assistants was done daily and preferably taking the data from the receipts or source documents.
Errors in the columnar books were corrected by means of counterpart entries in which the aforementioned were canceled with red ink and the due correction was made with black ink, this in the same line making reference to the wrong entry.
In the tabular journal it could be recorded in two ways:
The steps were as follows: Operation, Tabular Journal (Auxiliary Ledgers), Concentration, General Journal, General Ledger, Trial Balance and finally the Financial Statements.
Journal and cash system
This system was created with the purpose of resolving the work that existed in the timely registration of operations, based on the division of labor. To do this, the diary is divided into two; the cash journal, where only operations that represented the movement of money were recorded, either as an entry or exit of cash, while the other was the "Diary of various operations": where all operations that did not cause entry or exit of cash were recorded, so in this way, two people could record the operation.
In this system, operations were classified as:
Simple operations are those that were recorded in a single journal because they were entirely in cash or entirely on credit. The compound operations affected or had to be recorded in the two books, every compound operation was recorded first in the miscellaneous operations journal and the part that represented cash inflow or outflow was linked to the cash or bank journal.
In order to record the same operation in both books, what we call bridge or link accounts was used. These are temporary accounts that allow registration in two journals and once they have been registered in both journals, it is settled.
The main bridge accounts used were:
Every bridge account was opened in the miscellaneous operations journal and canceled in the bank journal.
centralizing system
Considering the fact that commercial companies carry out defined and constant operations, in which the object of said company is defined, to implement this system it was necessary to know the type of operations that the company frequently carries out in order to design a specific journal where such operations are recorded.
In general, we can say that the most frequent or most common operations carried out by the company are:
Taking into account the previous operations and considering that they are the most common and that they are carried out frequently, the manual system called “Centralizer” of a commercial company was integrated with the following journals:
The establishment of newspapers depended on the policy of buying and selling merchandise on credit that gave rise to the receipt or subscription of documents.
Policy system
This system is a further evolution of manual recording methods that consists of using an individual document to record each operation, its characteristic being the fact that it allows a greater division of work and, above all, speeds up the process of recording operations.
The policies are registered based on the continental newspaper lines. Furthermore, these are internal documents in which the operations are recorded and the receipts that justify the entries and amounts recorded therein are attached.
In this system, operations are recorded individually, that is, for each operation a policy is made, which maintains the line of the continental journal. A policy contains the following data:
The policies managed in companies are classified into 3 large groups:
Accounts receivable system
The accounts receivable system arose from the need that some companies had to issue receipts for the collection of certain income, such as:
For which an account receivable was issued, which was a much more complete document than a simple collection receipt.
In the case of accounts receivable, it was used to eliminate personal subaccounts from customer and debtor accounts, and for accounts payable, an asset account called "Accounts Receivable" was used to eliminate subaccounts from suppliers and creditors.
Accounts payable system
The system was adapted to be established in any type of company, mainly in those where most of the operations were on credit. The accounts payable/receivable procedure had the following objectives:.
The record was made through a liability account called "Accounts Payable".