Let's start with accounting.

I've been getting a reminder everyday for a least a month to comment on you initial thread! :)  the problem was the first question "Who is the manual for" stumped me ... there are so many :)  So I felt obliged to answer to this new thread.
I'm not an accountant but I've spent a lot of time capturing requirements from them over the years and a little has rubbed off... that can be a benefit or a big problem :)
So after that caution I will give my views on the questions from a purely accounting aspect...

1.Why should someone choose Adempiere over the alternatives?
There are a few points I can think of here...
* One Size Fits all
Adempiere is targeting the SME market place which is be a very varied user based, i.e. a typical SME definition can be organisation of anything from 5 people to 500 .... that's a big gap!   Some “alternatives” (such as Sage) address this by supplying a plethora of  packages aimed at companies of different sizes, but the I think it is safe to say that implementing a new software solution is a risky and costly affair and this is all more the case when speaking of an ERP that will potentially touch every aspect of your business.  Upgrading every few years is a potentially costly and risky affair.  Most small businesses don't start with big name ERPs straight off because of the immense license costs, the limited market place typically means experienced consultants are very expensive, and of course ongoing support & maintenance is a controlled market place too!
Adempiere like all open source is license free; but in addition the focus of the community on creating a bazaar is an attempt to create a free & open market place that will hopefully mean high quality & reasonably priced support services.
The lack of license fee means the potential customers are not paying “per module” and so can install a complete ERP and simply start using the more complex features as they grow.

* Accounts of Record versus Management
Many software packages aimed at the smaller enterprises use accounting as a “record of transactions”. That is they track your sales, cost & expenses and help you determine at the end of the year (or period – typically the quarter), by way of Income Statements (Profit & Loss accounts) & Balance Sheets, if you made any profit or not.  Now this is great to know and was the original (and perhaps minimal) purpose of doing accounts is the minimal requirements of accounts - we could probably say it is the minimal legal requirements for;
a) governments to see how much tax you own on your profits
and the case of public companies
b) shareholders (and potential shareholder) to determine how much their shares are worth.

So the income statement & balance sheet are the common method of expressing this information, and these financial accounts are typical in many alternatives including many commercial alternatives ... but management require other additional information which Adempiere tracks via various clearing & offset accounts.  An example of this might be the “Purchase Price Variance” accounts, analysing transactions in these accounts (which track variances between standard & actual costs) might allow management to determine if vendors are quoting one price but charging another or it might help management determine that the negotiating skills of one purchasing person/departments are enabling them to consistently purchases at below standard costs.  Also the ability to create and compare a set of Budgeting accounts and also historical accounts all management to evaluate->forecast-evaluate.

* Snapshot versus continuous
Another important difference betweens Adempiere's approach to accounts and other applications (in particular those aimed at smaller enterprises) is that the accounts & their reports mentioned above are typically produced as a “snapshot” at a given moment in time.  Now given that most finance departments (I've know) are pushed to produce even quarterly financial statements, it really means that there are perhaps only 4 moments in any given year where the management and/or owners actually know the actual current state of their business!!!
This is because while many applications normally allow sales orders & invoices to be created, processed and reported on them in real-time (as Adempiere can),  in accounting terms these transactions are typically only transferred to the General Ledger accounts in batch at the end of a given period (typically a month).  So at best the analysis of the accounts (which is what purpose of accounts is for after all!) are limited to those 12 end of month moments in time .  However, Adempiere posts this transactions to the General Ledger continuously, as documents are processed, so the accounts are always up to date and while the accountants may have manual adjustments to make (?) before any reports are finalised in theory the likes of the Income Statement & Balance Sheet as well as any other accounting based management reports can be generated at any moment to create an accurate state of the accounts at that moment!

* Cube – Business Information.
I mentioned management reporting above, well many companies have transactional databases used by their application but when it comes to reporting they export data from this transactional DB into a Data Mart ( or Warehouse) in a form that can allow them to produce management analysis/reporting.  The Fact_acct table, with its many & user definable dimensions (when it works :)),  actually acts as a pre built data cube that allows real-time analysis reports to be generated directly from the accounting data (as opposed to -in my experience- transactional data from the order/invoice etc documents themselves!).  

There are probably many features that could be mentioned to like the financial reporter or  the ability to create GL distributions but I was thinking of the big things. One feature that I imagine is fairly unique (I never saw it before myself) is the “Accounting Reset”.  This allows you to change any aspect of the accounts set-up and then delete and recreate the GL postings again... it does this by remove all the GL then reprocessing all the Documents again.

2.Where does accounting start in Adempiere?

Adempiere is all about the processing of Documents.  There are Sales Orders,Customer Shipments, Customer Invoices, AR Receipts, Physical Count (Stock count) , General Ledger Journals and many more ... everything in Adempiere is a centred around the processing of these documents.  And one of those processes  is posting them to the General Ledger.  To the users of the application this is completely hidden and they have no need to know account numbers or understand anything of it.  The simply create documents and when they have finished editing (drafting) them they indicate this by “completing” them.  And the accounting begins initially when a document is set into the “complete” status.  This will most likely initiates some procedures in the business logic of the document in question but it also flags the document to a server based process that will process the document in accounting terms.
Once completed a document can then be voided or reversed (and sometimes “reversed corrected” ... this is under some discussion in the forums at the moment) and these actions also will potentially impact the accounting.

3.How are accounts managed in Adempiere?

That's a big question!
A Client has a least one Account Schema define for it... the Primary Account Schema.

An Account Schema defines all the high level rules governing it; currency, costing methods, costing level etc.  It also, importantly, defines the “Elements” that are to be included in the Accounting Schema. This basically defines the granularity of the accounts posting and by default (or in Garden World at least – cannot remember if it's also default) includes:
* Organization
* Account – this is the account numbering defined by the Chart of Accounts
* Product
* Business Partner
* Project
* Campaign

Actual GL postings are made to what is called “Combinations” which are combinations of the above Elements.   So when, for example (using Garden World data), a shipment of  Elm trees and Roses are made to the customer Joe Block, a posting is created not for the document as a whole but for each unique combination of the above elements... so we get two postings ... one for each product (the other elements are all the same).

This enables potentially very complex accounting reporting.  In theory multiple schemas can be used for a client but I have no experience of that so will leave that for others to comment on.

The Accounting Schema also defines a set of default accounts (combinations) to be used.

4.How can a manager view the current status and balances of accounts?

There is not actual place that defines account number 41000 – trade revenue is Credit 1000.
After all what is 41000?  and what does a balance there tell us... Perhaps we only want the figure for specific Schema Elements (see above) such as Organisation HQ or perhaps we require it for the end of the last period?  So  in Adempiere we don't maintain a current balance... the current balance is in effect the total of all postings to the Account combination in question.  We could derive this balance from the Account viewer.

The role of the manager must explicitly be defined to be able to see accounting information; in the Role window “Show Accounting” must be checked.  Also the user preference (Tools->Preference) must also have “Show Accounting” ticked.

Once they have the “Show Accounting” they can choose View->Accounts to open the “Account Viewer” form.   We can use the viewer to generate queries based on Account Elements (Account, product, Business Partner, Project, Campaign), documents, posting types, dates or any combination ... or the manager could create printed reports of this using the Accounting Fact details window/reports.

But to be honest I cannot really imagine a situation were the manager would access the accounting data directly.  Perhaps the Accounts manager might to investigate a problem posting – but I would imagine Managers to generate predefined (by the Accounts manager?) reports using the Financial Reporter.
But even here I would suspect many managers would access data via the definable SLA criteria & Performance Goals.
Debtors/Creditor controller/managers could use the Aging, Open items & Dunning reports within the Open Items menu to manage their areas.  Forward looking Aging Reports could be used to generate basic reports on expected (trade related) cash flows in & out.

5.What other things must someone know about Adempiere to effectively use it
for accounting?

You need to understand the Chart of Accounts
You need to know how to define and manage the calendars that represent the financial periods.
You need to know how to ensure all documents posted correctly and there were no problems.
You need to know how currencies are managed, how different rates can result in currency gains & losses and how these are accounted for.
You need to know what “Charges” are, how they are defined and how & when you might use them.

6.Can someone provide a quick example regarding how to perform a few basic
accounting tasks from a managerial perspective?

a)

b)

7.How does accounting affect other aspects of Adempiere?

The Accounting is simple a recording the transactions that occur during the processing of the various documents. There is no real impact, the only things I can think of are;
* when processing (completing) a document the the financial period in which the document date lies must be open.
* It's not data coming from the “Accounts” but if a customer is above their credit limit new orders cannot be completed (so not shipped! - they can be entered though just not completed).  But as I say that's not strictly an accounting function.

Now as I said to start with these views are purely my take on thinks from an accounting standpoint.  Some might consider the accounts to include; how to the people in the finance department know which customer paid how much & for what & how much they still owe, which supplier is due to be paid this week and how do we reconcile our bank account with the banks...  to me that is finance ok but not necessarily accounts :) 

The other thing about accounting is while some countries define "principals" to be followed others define strict laws which must be followed to the letter.
Mike Judd our resident Accounting guru started some discussion on IFRS but I don't think anything concrete has come from out yet.

well that's me done for today.

colin