Structuring Database for Accounting

In a transaction, the names of accounts (or their accounting codes), date of transaction, amount, etc. is all data items. (b) Data : Data are known facts that can be recorded and which have implicit meaning. Data represent facts concerning people, places, objects, entities, events or even concepts.

Data can be quantitative and qualitative or they can be financial and non-financial in character. Consider the following transaction : April , Commenced business with Cash Rs. , , . This transaction, before being recorded through a Transaction Voucher, as shown in figure .

, need be split up into its data contents as “ ”, -Apr- , 642001, Bank Account, 110001,Capital Account, Rs. , , . Data are not useful for decision-making unless they are processed to suit to the requirements of decision-making situation. (c) Database : The data, after being collected, has to be stored so that different people can use them.

This requires the creation of a database. A database is a shared collection of interrelated data tables, files or structures, which are designed to meet the varied informational needs of an organisation (See Example database in figure . . It has two important properties (or