Abstract The article reports on elementary accounting. The procedural approach taken in a traditional elementary course has its costs. Double-entry bookkeeping is one of the most valuable conceptual tools ever developed. No accounting major, now or in the foreseeable future, should graduate without a thorough understanding of the procedural details of recording transactions in a double-entry system. The author believes that all accounting majors, and some non-majors, should be thoroughly versed in the details of debits and credits before they graduate. Rick Elarn, then Director of Relations with Educators for the AJOPA, argued in the May 1995 issue of journal "The CPA Letter" that double-entry bookkeeping is rapidly losing its relevance in the real world. Newer software such as the increasingly popular SAP-provides the capacity to collect a broader range of financial and nonfinancial information, more flexibility in report design, and better analytical support without maintaining a general ledger. Even at the low end of the market, simple accounting software, such as QuickBooks, has made transaction processing more user friendly than following a journal-entry format.
Karen V. Pincus (Mon,) studied this question.