The accounting software checklist that catches what audits miss

Feature comparisons are the easy part of choosing a package and the least useful. Every serious product raises an invoice and reconciles a bank feed. What separates them is a set of commitments you make when you sign up, most of which are invisible in a demonstration and expensive to discover later.

Twelve of them are below, as things to verify before committing rather than features to compare. Each has the question to ask, what a good answer looks like, and what a bad one costs you. Nothing is named and no price appears.

What to take away

The twelve are about ownership, access, exit and control, not about what the software does. Function is easy to test; commitment is not.
Points 1, 2 and 12 decide whether the decision is reversible. Settle those before anything else.
A vague answer to any of these is an answer. Ask for it in writing.

Data and exit

1. Can you take everything out, in a usable form? Every transaction with its coding, every ledger, the attached documents, and the trial balance. Test it on the trial account rather than believing a feature list. A bad answer here means changing your mind later costs a retyping project.

Data and exit checks

Export every transaction with coding
Export ledgers and attached documents
Export the trial balance
Test export on the trial account
Confirm access if you stop paying
Ask where data is held
Ask who else can reach it

2. What happens to your data if you stop paying?

Read-only access, a grace period, or nothing. All three exist. The records still have to be available for the periods the federal guidance on record retention sets out, and that obligation stays with you rather than with the supplier.

3. Where is the data held, and who else can reach it?

A plain answer to a plain question. A supplier who cannot answer it quickly is telling you something about how they think about it.

Control

4. Can a closed period be reopened, and by whom? If any user can change a closed month, then no report you have issued is final. Good answer: refused, or restricted to a named role and logged.

Control questions to verify

Can a closed period be reopened?
Can a journal post to a control account?
Are user roles granular enough?
Can payment release be separated?
Is there a full audit trail?
Does it show who changed what?

5. Can a journal be posted straight to a control account?

This is the entry that breaks the agreement between a subledger and the balance sheet. Good answer: restricted, warned, or logged with a name.

6. Are there user roles, and are they granular enough to separate the jobs?

Specifically: can the person who creates a supplier be prevented from releasing payments. If everyone has to be an administrator, the software has made a decision about your controls for you.

7. Is there an audit trail on every record, showing who changed what?

Not a version of the current state. A history. This is the question an accountant, a lender or a suspicious owner eventually asks, and it cannot be answered retrospectively.

The work you will actually do

8. Does it hold the schedules, or will you? Prepayments, accruals, loan splits, an asset register. Each one the package does not hold is a spreadsheet you maintain forever, and the ones most often absent are the asset register and the tax control reconciliation.

Work the software must hold

Prepayments and accruals schedules
Loan splits and asset register
Drill from report total to items
Date entries to goods arrival
Refuse entries into closed months

9. Can you get from a total on a report to the items behind it?

Click the receivables figure and see the open invoices. Without this, every question about a balance becomes an export.

10. Does it support the period rules you work to?

Dating an entry to when goods arrived rather than when the invoice was keyed, and refusing to date into a closed month. The reason this matters is set out in the expense recording guide, and a package that ignores it makes cut-off impossible. Which rules apply to your business follows from the method your books are kept under, described in the federal guide to accounting periods and methods.

Cost and people

11. What does it cost when you add the second and third person, and the modules you will need next year? Ask for the figure for the setup you expect to have in two years, not the one you are buying today. A bad answer is a price that only exists for a business smaller than yours will be.

Cost and accountant checks

Price for second and third user
Price for next year's modules
Ask for the two-year setup figure
Ask your accountant what is awkward
Confirm accountant file access

12. What does your accountant think, and can they get in? They inherit whatever the package cannot do. Ask which of your transactions they expect to be awkward, and confirm they can access the file in the way they normally work.

Using the twelve

Point	Verify by
1, 9	Doing it on a trial account
2, 3, 11	Asking in writing and keeping the reply
4, 5, 6, 7	Setting up a second user and trying to break something
8, 10	Entering a prepayment, a loan repayment and a back-dated invoice
12	A conversation before you sign

Half of them are answered in an afternoon on a trial. The other half are answered by email, which is a fair test in itself: a supplier who will not put an answer in writing has given you the answer.

How to verify each point

Point

1, 9: Trial account
2, 3, 11: Ask in writing
4, 5, 6, 7: Second user test
8, 10: Enter test entries
12: Conversation before signing

Verify by

1, 9
2, 3, 11
4, 5, 6, 7
8, 10
12

What this checklist deliberately omits

How it looks, how many integrations it lists, and what it costs this month all influence a decision. None tells you whether the books will be defensible in three years.

The account structure you put into it matters more. That is a chart of accounts decision. The monthly routine it must support is in the bookkeeping foundations guide.

Common questions

Is any package going to pass all twelve?

Probably not at the price a small business pays. The point is to know which ones it fails before you commit, so the work that falls to you is a choice rather than a discovery.

Which failure is worst?

Point 1. Everything else can be worked around at a cost you can estimate. An export you cannot use makes every other problem permanent.

Should we run this checklist on the system we already have?

Yes, and most people find two or three surprises. Finding out now that a closed period can be edited is better than finding out during a review.

How much time does the whole exercise take?

An afternoon per candidate, plus the emails. Against a decision you will live with for years, it is the cheapest part of the process, and shorter than the migration that follows, which the wider guide to accounting software covers.