Double Entry Bookkeeping

This paper seeks to elucidate the reason that the passage Particularis de Computis et Scripturis (PCS) appeared in the Summa, a mathematical work written by Luca Pacioli. Being PCS a work on commercial arithmetic, the antecedents of such works in Islamic and European mathematics are investigated, along with the extent of the practical use of mathematics by those societies. In addition, this work studies why Pacioli, who apparently had professional training in mathematics, became a well-known intellectual of his time.

(extract) This paper considers the role of Pacioli's Ricordanze, of the records that may be maintained within it, discusses the merits of maintaining a record book of this type, and questions why such a clearly useful device does not appear to have been adopted even though it was described in the same treatise which led to the universal adoption of double entry bookkeeping.

In French, the word "barrème" has the meaning "a scale"-for example a tax scale, or a salary average, and in Spanish the related word "baremas" means an average. There is even an outdated proverb: C'est un Barème/barème, he is counting genius. and the opposite: "Avoir oublié son barrême"-signifying a person who is incapable of calculating. 1 Few Frenchmen are aware that the word is a patronym, based on the the name of the French arithmetician, François Barrême. He was born in Tarascon in Pro-vence on July 7, 1638, and died in Paris in 1703. He and his descendants published several mathematical treatises, and especially his "Comptes-faits" was immensely popular, which explains why his name became an ordinary word. His grandson Nicolas (1687-1742) published a book on double entry bookkeeping in 1721, and he reissued and revised some of his grandfather's books. Having published more than ten books, 2 François Barrême is considered to be the founder of commercial accounting and bookkeeping. But since several books had already been published on these topics, his position as a founder is questionable. Therefore, in my presentation, I will first examine the position of Barrême's publications in context of the development of French arithmetic textbooks, and second I focus on the position of double entry accounting in France. French Arithmetic textbooks from the 16h century The French literature on accounting from the 16th century is very sparse. This fact is sometimes explained by the low esteem of trade in a society, where the social groups that really mattered were the aristocracy and the high clergy. Even high commerce was only practiced, with only rare exceptions, by people without authority or prestige. It was not until the time of the great Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert promoted trade and industry that commercial practices, including accounting , received official attention.

ABSTRACT

Through the comparison of five accounting registers compiled by the officers of the mints of the Kingdom of Naples, between 1453 and 1576, the author attempts to establish what influence had on the reign bureaucratic apparatus the Benedict Cotrugli knowledge regarding Double Entry. The results of research put in evidence the different application that the ragusan did of this accounting tool respect to Pacioli, because over to being the first exhibitor and to have it used in the management of their company, he released it at every socioeconomic level: personal, state and theoretical.

ASTRATTO

Attraverso il confronto di cinque registri contabili compilati dagli ufficiali delle zecche del Regno di Napoli, tra il 1453 e il 1576, l’autore tenta di stabilire quale influenza abbiano avuto nell’apparato burocratico regnicolo le conoscenze di Benedetto Cotrugli in materia di Partita Doppia. I risultati della ricerca pongono in evidenza il differente impiego che il raguseo fece di questo strumento contabile rispetto al Pacioli, in quanto oltre ad esserne stato il primo espositore e ad averlo utilizzato nella gestione della propria azienda, lo diffuse ad ogni livello socio-economico: personale, statale e teorico.

RESUMEN

Por medio de la comparación de cinco registros contables compilados por los oficiales de las fábricas de moneda del Reino de Nápoles, entre 1453 y 1576, el autor intenta establecer qué influencia tuvo en el reino el aparato burocrático el conocimiento de Benedicto Cotrugli sobre la partida doble. Los resultados de la investigación ponen en evidencia la diferente aplicación que hizo el raguseo de esta herramienta contable respecto a Pacioli, ya que al ser el primero en mostrarlo y tenerlo utilizado en la gestión de su empresa, lo lanzó a todos los niveles socioeconómicos: personal, estatal y teórico.

This paper presents some ancient secrets (and modern pitfalls) of information management. Users of primitive relational database systems recognized hundreds of years ago that logic can be used to organize information, and that the structure of relational information should be dictated by its owners, not database technicians. These facts are clearly indicated by the early practice of double-entry bookkeeping. This ancient knowledge has significant positive implication for modern organizations that struggle to effectively implement relational databases. Historical and cultural factors have undermined recognition and observance of important principles.

Eugen Bleuler, the founder of the concept of schizophrenia, pointed out that psychotic patients were able to live in two disjoint worlds (namely, the social, intersubjective world and the delusional world). He termed this phenomenon “double bookkeeping,” but did not provide any conceptual elaboration of this phenomenon or its possible mechanisms. Double bookkeeping has been neglected in mainstream psychiatry, but it has been addressed in recent theoretical work, however mainly concerned with the issue of delusion. In this article, we present clinical material that supports the view that double bookkeeping manifests itself across various psychotic phenomena and its antecedent may be observed in premorbid (pre-onset) phases as well as in the schizotypal disorder. We try to conceptualize double bookkeeping to concretize an often atmospheric perception of paradoxicality in the encounter with the patient. A phenomenological analysis of double bookkeeping suggests an instability in the af...

During the Middle Ages, Italian bookkeeping may be regarded as the leader in all Europe regarding its technique. Even though we may assume that merchants had already kept account books at earlier times, the oldest remaining fragment of such an account book date from the year 1211. The debtors' and creditors' accounts of a Bolognese client of a Florentine bank, which are stated therein, were written out in volgare. During the second half of the 13th century, we can already see an increase in the surviving records, but only around the year 1300 not only parts but also complete account books remain for us to review (namely the books of the Fini, Farolfi, Peruzzi, Bardi and Del Bene). Then, starting from the 1360s, we have the account books of Francesco Datini of Prato, which include many auxiliary and sub-books (until 1410 almost a total of 600 books). Without them, an analysis of the accounting systems is always very strongly based on presumptions. Most of the remaining account books from the period before 1350 were written by Tuscan merchants. The first remaining one from Milan dates to the second half of the 14th century (the Bank of del Maino, the Marco Serrainerio Company). Although these books are written in Latin, they show a structure regarding bookkeeping and accounting which is almost identical with that of the Tuscan account books written in the vernacular. Only in the 15th century do we find evidence of account books from other Italian regions (for example, the account book of the Venetian Gicomo Badoer, 1436-39). The entries of the accounts consisted mostly of one ore several full sentences, which were skillfully made up on a page split into three columns. An entry started with the name of the debtor or creditor, the first letter of his name was sited in the left column. After the expression dee dare (shall give) or dee avere (shall have), a statement of disposition followed the reason for the entry with a short description of the business transaction, which often contained an exact description of the trade goods. In older account books this was completed with the names of witnesses or guarantors who were present during the business transactions. Here the sentence was made up in such a way that the quantity of the traded goods-as well as the first letter of the client's name-could be written in the left column. At the end of the sentence/entry, the amount was noted so that it could be placed easily in the right column. Even though the Italian merchants calculated with Arabic numerals as early as the 13th century, Roman figures dominated in their account books until the late 15th century (but with decreasing frequency). The number of traded goods (placed in the left column) and the noted amount in the right column were written in Roman numerals exclusively. The page numbering, date and notes, often appearing as intermediate or sub-sums, were increasingly written in Arabic numerals. The prolonged use of the 'old' writing style is mostly explained by with the general belief of the contemporaries that the Roman were forgery-proof. For a long time, debits and credits were not placed one next to the other, especially in notebooks, but rather on top of each other (so-called sezione sovraaposto entry). If a debt had been paid, it was written down below the debit-entry/entries. The entry was written as a whole sentence similar to the one described above; instead of dee dare and dee avere, it said ha dato (has given), ha avuto (have gotten) or abbiamo dato (we have given). During the 14th century, the account books were divided as a whole into one debit part in the front and one credit part at the back. Only towards the end of the century was the direct line-up of debit and credit established in Tuscany; perhaps this had already been practiced for somewhat longer in Venice. In the beginning, both the left and right of the two open sheets of the accountant's ledger was used (noted as bookking alla veneziana); then the paper itself was divided into two parts by a line.

Dieses Lehrbuch in der 1. Auflage unterstützt SchülerInnen und StudentInnen dabei, die komplexen und umfangreichen Themen der Buchführung zu erlernen und zu verstehen. Die vernetzten Inhalte demonstrieren wirtschaftliche Abläufe und stellen Zusammenhänge, speziell zur Wirtschaftslehre und dem wirtschaftlichen Rechnen, her. Lehrerfahrungen und viele Rückmeldungen von SchülerInnen und StudentInnen unterschiedlichster Schul- und Studienstufen sind in die Erstellung dieses Lehrbuches mit eingeflossen. Das Lehrbuch ist verständlich aufgebaut und beinhaltet den theoretischen Input, viele Geschäftsfälle inklusive deren Verbuchung und andere Beispiele, die bereits gelöst sind, um darzustellen, wie die einzelnen Aufgaben verbucht und abgearbeitet werden. Der Umfang des Einführungslehrbuches richtet sich nach den Erwartungen, die an erfolgreich absolvierende SchülerInnen und StudentInnen unterschiedlicher Schul- und Studienstufen in der Einführungsphase der Buchhaltung bzw. des Rechnungswesens gestellt werden. Die verschiedenen Themenbereiche umfassen prüfungsrelevantes und fachübergreifendes Wissen und zeichnen sich besonders dadurch aus, dass in den jeweiligen Kapiteln zusätzlich auf gesetzliche Bestimmungen verwiesen wird.

Double entry bookkeeping emerged by the end of the 13th century and was adopted by, for example, the Datini of Prato during the 1380s. In the transition from single to double entry evident in the Datini Archives, initially accounting records were kept in an account book called a Ricordanze. Record books of this name were typical of Tuscany and, when such books were first used in Tuscany, businessmen began to use them also as a form of personal diary and autobiographical record. Others not in business followed suit and maintained purely personal biographical diaries of the same name. For those in business, the Ricordanze thus developed into a hybrid: partly autobiography and personal and, partly, a place to record matters relating to his business, including details of transactions and of other matters he did not wish to forget, such as promises, obligations, and conditional agreements. As revealed in the Datini archives for the 14th and 15th centuries, use of a Ricordanze for this pu...

Luca Pacioli, was a Franciscan friar born in Borgo San Sepolcro in what is now Northern Italy in 1446 or 1447. It is believed that he died in the same town on 19 June 1517. He is best remembered for his 615-page mathematical compendium, Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportioni et Proportionalità, published in 1494; and for his friendship with Leonardo

The system proposed in this paper is a value transfer system with its distributed, decentralized, immutable, and extensible ledgers. It leans on the principles of real existing transaction recording systems (double-entry bookkeeping), which make use of ledgers. These systems are distributed. They are decentralized, if the artificial requirement for trusted parties, who are privileged to assign Ids to individual accounts, are removed. They are immutable, and for sure extensible. Fraud is only possible at the cost of very heavy crime. The introduced system includes a process to prove ownership of accounts, making a central authority superfluous. Immutability is guaranteed by allowing “append” as the only operation to modify a ledger.

Il Libro di spese diverse (1540-1556) presenta fedelmente la dimensione artistica e sociale in cui Lorenzo Lotto ha agito nella fase finale della sua vita, caratterizzata da continui trasferimenti tra Veneto e Marche. La presente edizione del manoscritto conservato a Loreto è arricchita dal frutto di nuovi studi, che nell’introduzione pongono in evidenza l’adesione da parte dell’artista ai caratteri più originali del Rinascimento italiano, attraverso l’uso di una rudimentale forma di partita doppia, sistema contabile che esprime in modo paradigmatico i grandi progressi della società italiana del tempo. Il commento e gli apparati (glossario e indici) forniscono per la prima volta un supporto alla consultazione di questa fonte, grazie all’analisi approfondita delle note registrate dall’artista.

Goethe’s 'Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung' features a number of
passages that did not make it into the finalized version of the 'Lehrjahre'. In
one of them, the narrator rants against the protagonist’s over-consumption
of coffee. The rise of German coffee consumption, commencing in the
1760s, was indeed an object of fierce debate. One of the specific features
of this debate was its simultaneous consideration of the economic and
dietetic implications. Ever since the advent of the metaphor of circulation,
these spheres were deeply interwoven and informed each other. Within the
'Sendung', this organic perspective is embodied by Werner. In a world that is otherwise so commited to the principle of circulation, the isolated sphere of art and theatre must find a way to participate in it, he insists.