Accounting guide
What your accountant actually needs from your accounting software
Adviser access, a clean trial balance and a working audit trail matter more than any feature on the sales page. Ask before you choose.
Your accountant works in your file every year and sometimes every month. What they need from your software is short, specific, and almost never on the marketing page.
Adviser access, and it should be free
Every serious cloud ledger gives your accountant their own login at no cost. That is the standard, and it exists because vendors want accountants recommending them.
If a product wants you to buy a seat for your accountant, or expects you to share your own login, treat that as a meaningful cost and a security problem rather than a detail.
A trial balance that can be exported
The first thing an accountant does is pull a trial balance. It needs to export cleanly, balance, and tie to the general ledger without manual adjustment.
Ask to see a trial balance export during your trial. It sounds basic. Products that make it awkward create a cost that lands in your fee note every year.
An audit trail nobody can quietly edit
Posted transactions should not be silently editable. Where a correction is needed there should be a reversal or a journal that leaves a trace, with a record of who did it and when.
This matters most in the products that came from a desktop tradition where editing history was normal. If a figure can change after a period is closed and nothing records it, your accountant cannot rely on last month's work.
Journals, lock dates and period close
Your accountant will post year end journals for depreciation, accruals and provisions. Check that journal entry exists, that it can be dated into a prior period where appropriate, and that periods can be locked afterwards.
A lock date is what stops somebody capturing an invoice into a year that has already been signed off. Without one, the numbers your accountant reported can change after the fact, which is how a clean year end becomes a reopened one.
Ask them first, not afterwards
One question early saves money. Which products do you work in comfortably, and does my choice change your fee.
You are not obliged to follow the answer. But an accountant working in an unfamiliar product bills the learning time to you, and every awkward question takes longer to resolve. That gap is usually larger than the price difference between the products.
Attachments, and why they end an audit query quickly
Your accountant will be asked to support figures, whether at year end or when SARS verifies a VAT claim. Software that keeps the supplier invoice attached to the transaction turns that request into an afternoon instead of a fortnight in an email archive.
Ask what the storage limits are and what happens to attachments if you leave. A document store you cannot export is a liability rather than a feature.
Common questions
01Should I let my accountant choose my accounting software?
Ask for their preference and take it seriously, because their familiarity affects your fees and your year end. Make the final decision yourself, since you are the one using it every day.
02Do accountants get free access to cloud accounting software?
Yes, adviser access is free on the mainstream products. If a product expects you to pay for your accountant's login, factor that in as a real cost.
03What is a lock date and why does it matter?
It prevents transactions being posted into a period that has been closed and reported. Without one, figures your accountant already signed off can change afterwards, which reopens work you have already paid for.
Editorial note
This guide is general buying guidance and not accounting, legal or tax advice. Amounts and deadlines set by SARS change, so confirm the current figures for your own business before you rely on them.