8. Original every business the use of tickets, vouchers, or memorandum forms, is becoming more and more prevalent. Practically every entry going into the cash book, journal, sales book, pur chase book or any of their subdivisions is evidenced in one way or other by some form of memorandum. As a general rule no use is made of these memoran dums after the information has been transcribed in the book of preparatory entry. Of course, in the case of incoming bills, or carbons of outgoing bills, the original records are obtained and filed away for possi ble future reference.
There is no doubt but that if these original records are prepared in suitable form they will serve many ends now obtained only thru the use of detailed books of preparatory entry. If all the cash payments, for instance, are evidenced by a voucher, and if the voucher number for every transaction is entered in the cash book, we need make no further records there beyond the name of the account affected.
9. Posting from all the tickets are in a standard form and vouchers or tickets are made out for the few entries which have not previously been so recorded, there is a complete record of the data contained in the book of original entry, but carried on tickets as well as in the books.
As tickets are naturally more flexible than a book, time will be saved if postings are made from these tickets. The tickets for a day, or for a month, can be arranged in the order in which the accounts in the ledger are carried. One could then post directly from the tickets to the accounts, making two opera tions by posting first the debits, and then the credits. The tickets can also be separated according to media and then according to the various accounts into which they will be posted.
10. Advantages of this advantages of this method are many. Greater speed and greater accuracy are perhaps the most apparent. Each sep arate ticket is placed close to the account before the posting is made. Only one ticket, and one amount comes to the attention of a poster at a time, and op portunities for errors are consequently reduced. It is possible to distribute the work among several em ployes where if books were used it would be neces sary to compel one clerk to do it. It will be neces sary to provide posting checks on the tickets them selves. Space should be left for the folio of the ledger to which the posting is made, and the initials or ref erence number of the clerk making the posting.
A good filing system is essential to the successful operation of this method. Reference is frequent and must be easy. Some business houses file each class of -Vouchers separately in envelops. All vouchers representing cash payments, for example, would be filed in a separate envelop, headed "Cash payments from to ." Other firms file them numer ically in drawers, making no arbitrary division by dates.
11. Carbon use of carbon paper has been a great aid in reducing the mechanical labor of bookkeepers. All bills are now recorded in dupli cate or triplicate for office records. Checks, reports and the like are made in original or duplicate form at the same operation. Far greater accuracy results, and disputes with customers are consequently re duced.
Check books for example; where formerly it was the custom to record the details of each check drawn on a stub, are now made in such a form that the writ ing of a check results in a carbon copy being made. Thin, unprinted sheets bearing only the check num ber, are placed in the check book following each sheet of checks. There is no danger then of neglecting to make the stub record at the time the check is drawn.
12. A combination sales and billing is at times possible to avoid some of the details of mak ing out bills by combining that operation with the operation of writing up the sales book. To this end one page of the sales book will be made up of the series of bills perforated so that they may be de tached. The next sheet would be a wider sheet onto which would be carboned all the data put on the orig final bill. The columns at the right of this sheet repre sent the various classifications of sales and it is only necessary to distribute the sales themselves over these various columns.
On page 256 will be found examples of this form of sales book. When the original bill is made out, the left-hand side of the wider sheet is also filled out by the carbon impression. At the end of the day the bookkeeper need only distribute the total sales for each account over the sales classifications indicated in the columns at the right, and then total up each column. To prove his work he must make the total of the distribution columns equal the total sales as indicated in the carboned section at the left.