In early accounting, all transactions had to be recorded with a notary as witness; they allowed no erasures and all pages of ledgers had to be numbered and verified before any transactions could be put in them. This procedure, to a great extent, continued into the late 1970s with manual accounting until the use of computers for mass processing.

Some computer systems continue to have this requirement; i.e., no changes to past records. Other common accounting tools allow for the accountant to go back and make whatever changes they choose - some with and some without a record of the changes?

What is the best choice? Should accounting programs have flexibility that allows for changes to be made to past records or should the accounting records be immutable?