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Because the ledger is fed by imports. Sales arrive from one system, payroll from another, expenses from a spreadsheet, and each import has to be checked against the thing it came from.
By the time the numbers tie, the month it describes is three weeks gone and the commentary is archaeology.
Postings arrive from the source document as it happens: an invoice, a bill, a pay run, a depreciation charge. There is no import step to reconcile.
Every balance drills to the document and the person who approved it, so a query is answered in the record rather than in an inbox.
It will not let you rewrite history. Corrections are postings of their own — slower to read and far easier to defend.
It also does not file your returns. It produces the figures and the reconciliation; submission stays with whoever is authorised.
The close becomes a review of exceptions rather than an assembly exercise. Recurring journals and accruals have already run, and the checklist shows what has not.
Management accounts are available during the period, so the conversation happens while something can still be done.
Yes, and reopening is recorded with a reason.
Yes, with consolidation and inter-company elimination.
Yes, exported with the detail attached.
Half an hour on your own numbers is usually enough to say whether Books is the right place to start.