Hello bilalak, what are the minimum books that have to be kept for a small business. Presume sales , purchases, cash and general ledger. Pl confirm. whether it is mandatory to use accounting softwares or can be kept in a spread sheet. Is it mandatory to issue computer generated receipts or can be manual?
You maintain sales journal when you sale products or services and you will be buying stuff e.g. office supplies for your business operation so you maintain purchase journal.
Cash journal for petty cash/bank account/writing cheques/cash flow. You have to decide what kind of accounting you want to do e.g. cash basis or accrual basis based on that you have to post all the above transaction on to general ledger.
Keeping your record computerized with a reliable software is highly recommended. Depending on business, if the business is very small e.g. one-man show then you can just use spreadsheet but if its medium size then go for simply accounting/accpac if its little more biger than medium size business then go for custom made softwares but manual receipts definitely not recommended in any case as for Canada Customs you have to keep your record for 7 years, so if you do manual work, it would be very hard to keep a track of everything.