Balancing books refers to maintaining financial records and ensuring that the amount of money spent matches the amount earned. The term "balancing book" can be interchangeable with other synonyms such as bookkeeping, accounting or even ledger keeping. While all these terms are used to describe similar functions, they do have slight differences. Bookkeeping refers to the task of recording financial transactions in an organized way to produce timely and accurate financial statements, accounting is the process of interpreting and analyzing financial data, and ledger keeping is the process of recording financial transactions as they occur in a company's general ledger. Regardless of the term used, the ultimate goal is to ensure a company's financial stability, profitability and growth.