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Because the ledger is usually fed by imports. Sales arrive from one system and payroll from another, and when a balance looks wrong the answer is in a spreadsheet nobody kept.
The general ledger is the single record of every posting: date, accounts, dimensions, amounts, and a link to the document that caused it.
Postings arrive from the source document rather than a file. An invoice, a bill, a payroll run and a depreciation charge each post as they happen, carrying their reference with them.
A cost centre looks overspent. You open the balance, read the postings, and land on the specific expense claim and the person who approved it, without leaving the report.
It will not let you rewrite history. Corrections are postings in their own right — slower to read, and far easier to defend.
Invoicing, purchasing, banking, payroll, inventory and fixed assets all post here. The trial balance, P&L, balance sheet and cash flow are views of it.
Yes, or consolidated. Entity is a dimension on every posting.
To the originating document, including the approval and who gave it.
Yes, and reopening is recorded with a reason.
Fourteen days, every module, no card. Or half an hour with someone who will run it on your own records and tell you where it does not help.