What is real time accounting and when should it be used?
Answers
When transactions are posted as and when they occur
Here's how I see it in practical terms:
When financial information (e.g. GLAbalances, AP/AR records, financial statements, financial dashboards) is updated as individual transactions post. In some systems, you may see "near real time" which means some information may be updated within minutes, rather than within nano-seconds.
Contrast this with systems that batch transactions today for overnight processing, where the information is not available until the morning.
Generally, for financial reporting, when information is entered into the financial/
Many systems do have a lag time esp. for large systems or when entries are made.
For example...
AR system portion...
When you post information re AR/Revenue, the entire financial/accounting system would then have that information so anyone who has access to it can view it in "real time".
There are some systems that allow batch transactions [depending on the system or processes] that occur at the end of the day and that information won't be available in that system until the next day.