Many books of first entry instead of one are employed and numerous columns are pro vided in which items of a smaller nature, as, for -example, cash, discounts and merchandise are placed in separate columns. The totals of these columns, not the individual items, are posted to the ledger. The voucher system, used extensively by manufacturing corpora tions, railroads and governmental departments, is a device for eliminating from the ledger many accounts with individuals. At the same time the special columns of the voucher record make possible as elaborate a classification of expenditures as is desired. These columnar records decrease the labor and time required in the preparation of detailed statements and facilitate the comparison of like items of in come and expense of several different periods. Slip systems are often. employed, especially for sales and orders, which enable a facsimile du plicate to be made by the aid of a carbon sheet. Postings are made from the original slips which may be sorted out in any convenient order to determine the total sales of each kind of article and then filed away for reference.
An important improvement in the form of the ledger has been the substitution of cards or loose leaves in place of a bound book. The advantages of this are: the elimination of dead accounts; the ease of keeping the accounts in alphabetical order; the facility of expanding with a growing business, and of employing many clerks to do the work simultaneously, and the ability to make the record with a type writer or ledger posting machine. Some per sons are prejudiced against cards and loose leaves on the unsupported ground that they make fraud more easy. And in some countries,
as, in France, the law does not attach validity to any accounts not kept in a bound book The mechanical improvements and devices include various kinds of machines which re lieve the bookkeeper of mathematical calcula tions and render inaccuracy less frequent. Cash sales registers not only record each sale and furnish a receipt to every customer but also total the sales whenever desired. There are various kinds of adding machines and many others which do. multiplying and dividing as well as adding and subtracting. Card and loose leaf ledger and voucher record posting machines consist of a writing and adding ma chine mounted on tracks so that it may be easily moved into a position to enter the amounts in the proper columns. Order writing and billing machines designed for the records peculiar to each kind of business are used by many large mail-order and retail merchandise houses, banks, railroads and manufacturing cor porations. The mechanical tabulator used by the United States census office, railroads and insurance companies is a machine which classi fies and tabulates statistics by means of cards with holes punched in them. The position of each hole varies according to the facts, as the number and amount of the policy, the age of the insured, term of the insurance, premium, etc. The punched cards are run through the machine and by means of an electrical connection made whenever a hole appears the cards are sorted, the facts tabulated and certain computations made. See ACCOUNTING.