only have three lines written to the database. In modular systems, the purchase or general ledger line will be “re-created” in the appropriate book with a hook back to the invoice. This results in four or more lines being created (depending on how the software has been built), duplicating information. In a unified ledger accounting system, duplicate lines do not exist and software hooks are unnecessary. Slow down time Imagine that time was slowed down so that any processes that occur after entering your purchase invoice take over 5 minutes to run. With a modular accounting system the three initial lines of your invoice are placed onto the purchase ledger, wait five minutes, the software creates an additional line in the general ledger, wait five minutes, the control account value is updated as so on. This may not seem appropriate today, however, there are occasions when systems shut down in the middle of one of these processes, and that is when you get an accounting system that is out of balance. A Unified Ledger accounting system can never be out of balance. (That is on the presumption that proper Database Transaction Controls are in place, and the ″three initial lines″ referred to above are always written either completely or not at all) Slow reporting and enquiry time Unified ledgers, simply by their design, tend to store all transactional data in one table - whilst this can have some benefits from a reporting point of view it does make report writing more complicated for the user as they have to distinguish between supplier, customer and nominal transactions. Additionally as data volumes grow reporting can become very slow taking days in some cases to produce profit and loss accounts Accounting systems