I put together a general ledger from scratch that produces financial statements in addition to the cash disbursements, receipts, and checkbook balance.  The cash accounts are on seperate sections from the rest.  I made a standard form for each account and replicated it horizontally.  The receipt account design is slightly different than the disbursement account design.  I added an extra column to some accounts for tracking units.  All accounts and statements from the spreadsheet were formated so they could be printed on standard paper.  The financial statements are below the disbursemsnt accounts and start on the left side of the spreadsheet.  It all goes in a three ring binder at the end of the year.  I formated all with thick boarders and color colored headings.  That makes all the report printouts look neat and standardized.  Thick boarders (I actually darkened and narrowed columns and rows for this) and colored headings makes navigation very quick on what became a large spreadsheet.  There is room below any of the cash receipt or disbursement accounts entries to pull out numbers and make a note of subcatagory totals if needed.  Spreadsheets are great for this because you can do a lot of things on the fly that you never dreamed of doing earlier.

What I really like about the system I've got is that it is solid.  The balance sheets and income statements reflect real world values (with the exception of the wild run up in land values, my choice).  The checkbook balances to the penny.  The difference between the beginning and ending balance sheet is explained to the penny by the income statement and statement of owner's equity.  It's easy to track where the numbers on the statements came from.  Beside the financial statements is an companion statement with additional space for extra notes for each number if desired.  The accounts are detailed enough to produce good information for enterprise and cash flow analysis that I do on other spreadsheets and SMS. 

This does not require upgrades or support from software companies.  Principles of accounting do not change from year to year.  Tax laws do.  I don't even try to keep up with the tax angle of this nor does my spreadsheet deal with it.  My depreciation on the spreadsheet reflects the real world and is not for the purpose of computing taxes.  I have a CPA who works full time to keep up with stuff like that.  He likes my spreadsheet because it provides easy access to the information he needs.

This is working well for me, but I doubt that it would work for everyone.  This is not exactly General Motots here, just a family farm with some part time employees.  I actually wrote a tutorial so my CPA or others in the event of my demise would be able to understand it.  The tutorial is one page long plus a map of the spreadsheet, but assumes one has a basic understanding of double entry accounting.  Spreadsheets are pretty straight forward.  You can tell how they work just by looking at them and seeing the equations entered in the cells.

I've used two different purchased accounting software programs and sometimes look around to see what I am missing.  It didn't take me any longer to set up the spreadsheet than it did to set up and use the other programs, but peoples milage can vary a lot in these regards.  

I think it comes down to personal choice.  If you are used do dealing with installation of new software and updates, do not mind reading through a tutorial or playing around until you figure out how the software works, do not mind fitting into the way of someone else's way of doing things, and dread the process of building and using a spreadsheet, purchased accounting software is probably the way to go.

If, on the other hand, you are constantly frustrated with other people's way of doing these things, don't really care what they were thinking or want to hold hands with them, but can easily build spreadsheets to do what needs to be done, using your own spreadsheet could be your key to happiness.