What accounting books should a business keep?

In order to ensure a good follow-up of the activities within a company, the keeping of certain accounting books and certain registers appears as a necessity. This is governed by regulations which make these accounting documents compulsory in certain cases and whether you are a natural or legal person. Discover here these accounting books which must be kept within the company.

Some clarifications on bookkeeping

Keeping an accountant book is a practice that applies to all companies involved as a trader or involved in trade with the exception of the types of companies that we mention here:

• Natural persons carrying out a commercial activity and considered as a micro-enterprise
• People considered to be micro-entrepreneurs

Accounting documents which must be kept must be kept for a period of ten years and in original copy, this implies that the accounting book to be kept for this period is the original. It can be in the form of manuscripts, physical registers or even electronic files.

The journal book: an essential accounting book

This accounting document records all operations related to the company’s capital. It is used in two ways that you are explaining here:

• Some companies do all of their paperwork there, so it becomes a multi-functional journal
• Other companies make use of different accounting registers such as auxiliary registers (they relate to sales, purchases and the recording of banking transactions). Here the journal-book plays a centralizing role for the information present in the secondary books.

To facilitate accounting controls, these companies make use of secondary books because they record daily the transactions carried out within the company.

The general ledger: a necessary accounting document

It carries out an inventory of the transactions present in the book-journal but them in another way. The general ledger lists the accounting transactions by classifying them by account. The company’s accounting activity is therefore reviewed and each transaction is associated with the accountant who performed it. Like the ledger which has secondary registers, the general ledger can also have them. It will therefore be considered as a general ledger.

The inventory book: an accounting book for estimating the company’s assets

The inventory book differs from the other two accounting documents presented earlier. It identifies the assets and liabilities that the company owns. It must be precise in order to facilitate the preparation of assessments within the company. In this register, information such as:

• The stock of products available within the company
• Information related to supplier debts
• Financial fixed assets carried out by the company
• Tangible and intangible fixed assets made by the company
• Customer receivables

For companies whose accounting years started from the beginning of 2016, the inventory accounting document no longer appears in the mandatory accounting registers, according to orders and decrees dating from 2015.
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