That's kind of like saying the wheel is not essential to civilization, but that it is "inevitable." An accounting system of some kind is necessary to organize the limited resources available to any civilization, and that is exactly what money is and how it emerged in early civilizations.
Well, for a start, there have been loads of civilisations that didn't have wheels. Don't make the mistake of thinking our current civilisation is the only one that can exist because it exists right now. Those other civilisations existed in their time too.
There is a big difference between necessary and inevitable. Crime is inevitable. Is it necessary? I believe a civilisation could exist if the people decided to outlaw money. There are so many other ways to allocate resources: bartering, contracts (which get you asynchronicity), centralised allocation (which can be at a national level, e.g. communism or a local level, like a feudal system), gift economies. All of these have existed and worked for a time.
