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cedures. The records must be as simple as possible
and must not entail the writing up of separate books.
If bills are drafted so that they comply with the
Solicitors' Accounts Rules, the copy of the bill is
the only record necessary. If the copy is put on a
file of unpaid bills when it is delivered, and trans
ferred to a file of paid bills when it is settled, there
is no need to make entries in books, or to prepare
lists of delivered bills, in order to maintain complete
records.
A system should be devised for automatically
rendering further accounts to clients in respect of
outstanding bills after the period, decided by the
partners, has elapsed. This will be a simple task if
the unpaid bills are filed in date order and periodically
checked by the cashier.
Simplifying the records of bills saves yet more
time in the cash office.
iv.
Observing the solicitors' accounts Rules
The ultimate responsibility for ensuring that
accounting procedures do not infringe the Rules
rests with the partners, but the cashier must have
a detailed knowledge of the Rules since his work is,
of necessity, almost entirely unsupervised.
The
accounting system must, therefore, contain every
possible safeguard against infringement.
It is this
factor which has, in the past, caused many accounting
systems in use in solicitors' offices
to become
exceedingly complicated.
If it is properly designed and installed and carried
out according to the designer's instructions, it can
contain a built-in " insurance policy " which, as far
as is humanly possible, eliminates any possibility of
infringing the Rules.
For this reason, when a
system has been designed for a particular firm, it
must be installed and operated without any modifica
tion whatever, beyond those made necessary by
changing circumstances. For, a system should be
designed so as to be flexible enough to accommodate
any forseeable change in requirements.
v. Wages
It is the responsibility of the cashier to pay staff
wages and to keep the relevant records. All that
needs to be said on this subject is that carbon copy
principles can be applied which eliminate so many
copying operations that the preparation of wages,
even in a large firm, becomes a very simple and
quickly completed task.
vi. Financial statistics
Apart from being the record of a firm's financial
transactions, the books of account provide a wealth
of information concerning the day-to-day running
of the office.
Information should be regularly
extracted and passed to the partners so that, for
example, immediate action can be taken to check
excessive expenditure. The details of past spending
can form the basis of future budgeting, and the
profitability of the various departments, individuals
or types of work can easily be assessed. Full use
should always be made of the books of account and
the accounting system should be designed so that
any statistics can be quickly and easily extracted.
Thus, much can be done to improve the methods
employed in the cash office.
The main advantages of modern manual account
ing methods are that more work can be done in the
cash office without increasing the staff, errors arising
from too many copying operations are reduced to
an absolute minimum, if not eliminated completely,
and all the information necessary for the efficient
running of the practice, at least from a financial
point of view, can be extracted from the books
with the minimum of effort.
. Hand-written carbon-copy ledger-posting must
result in a saving of at least 25 per cent, of the time
taken in writing up the books of account by con
ventional methods. If the whole system is redesigned
so as to eliminate unnecessary books, there will be
an even greater saving. It is doubtful whether the
use of a book-keeping machine will increase the time
saved.
In fact, if the operator is not a proficient,
typist it may take more time to complete the books
on the machine, than to do so by hand.
Carbon-copy ledger-posting systems use loose-leaf
staionery and are very easily adapted to meet any
requirements peculiar to a particular firm.
The
stationery itself must be designed so that the proving
and other procedures are as simple as possible.
Provision must be made for a running balance to be
kept on all ledger accounts. Apart from being
essential to the proving process this simplifies the
task of extracting balances and provides the profit-
earners with invaluable information.
The most
important advantage of a running balance is that
the work of the cash office does not come to a halt
while the books are being audited.
Designing the stationery so that carbon copy
principles can be employed means that some old
and universally accepted conventions must be
discarded. One is that debits and credits change
sides in the books of prime entry and are headed
" receipts " and " payments ".
However, these
minor points do not alter basic principles.
To achieve
the maximum benefit from
the
introduction of a new accounting system, the books
of account should include full details of every step
taken during the course of each transaction so that
there is a complete financial history of it always
available.