Re: Books on Accounting/Bookkeeping basics that would play well with LSMB

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

Just one more specific point in this area.

The goal of my recommendation is to allow one to do the following
regarding financial accounting:

1)  Run one's own books as a sole proprietor
2)  Be fluent enough in the concerns and accounting terms to be able
to understand reliably what a customer's accountant is telling you.

Just about any book you can get on the topic that you find
understandable will get you this far.  The hard part is thinking about
accounting and what sort of concerns are present in an accounting
solution.  From this point, it becomes easy to learn and understand
what the best practices are.  One point I would add is that LedgerSMB
is in many respects closer to the paper accounting world than most
other software packages.  This is one thing that DWS did right
regarding SQL-Ledger and I don't expect that we will change that.

Accounting is a very conservative discipline in several senses of the
word.  Often the older books which cover paper-based accounting will
get you where you need to go and will help you understand the issues
involved every bit as well as the newer books and one may find the
logic more transparent (writing skills seem to have gone down in
recent decades).

There may be local exceptions to each of these rules for example.  We
are not talking about Ontario PST or Finnish forex rules, though, and
even these issues follow the most basic guidelines of financial
accounting at least to a large extent.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers