What does ledger mean?

A ledger is actually a running account. It does not belong to the account book system in accounting. It is an auxiliary account book set up by enterprises to strengthen the management of a certain aspect and understand the information of a certain aspect in more detail. There is no fixed format and no fixed account page. Enterprises can design their own according to actual needs, and try to be as detailed as possible to fully reflect the information of a certain aspect.

Accounting books, referred to as account books for short, are composed of interrelated account pages with a certain format, which are used to comprehensively record the economic and business matters of enterprises and units in a timely and classified manner. The reason for setting up and registering account books after filling in accounting vouchers is that although they are all used to record economic business, their functions are different. In accounting, every economic business must obtain and fill in accounting vouchers, so the number of accounting vouchers is large and scattered. Each voucher can only record the contents of individual economic businesses, and the information provided is sporadic, which can not comprehensively, continuously and systematically reflect and supervise a certain type and all economic business activities of an economic unit in a certain period, and is not convenient for future reference. Therefore, in order to provide systematic accounting data for economic management, all units must establish and use the method of registering account books based on vouchers, and concentrate and sort out a large amount of accounting data scattered on accounting vouchers to generate useful accounting information, thus providing the main basis for preparing accounting statements, accounting analysis and auditing.