Double-entry bookkeeping (Pacioli's treatise)
Contabilidad por partida doble difundida (Summa de Pacioli)
- Date
- 1494 · confidence high
- Place
- Venice, Italy
- Credited to
- Luca Pacioli (Summa de arithmetica); earlier Venetian and Florentine practice
- People
- 👤 Luca Pacioli1445–1517
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
The first printed description of the Venetian method of recording every transaction as a debit and a credit, with a journal, a ledger and a balance sheet. The printing press turned it into the standard of mercantile Europe.
Benedetto Cotrugli wrote about it in 1458 (manuscript); the practice is documented in Genoa in 1340.
What it led to
- The accounting rationality of mercantile capitalism (Weber, Sombart)
- Auditable joint-stock companies and credit based on ledgers
- Commercial teaching and abacus schools
- Public accounting and state taxation
Built on
- Movable-type printing pressc. 1450
- Benedikt Kotruljević (Cotrugli)'s accounting treatise1458 (publicado 1573)
- Hindu-Arabic numerals (Fibonacci)
- Ledgers of Genoese and Florentine merchants (14th century)
Made possible
- Stock exchange1602 (mercado) / 1611 (edificio)
- Joint-stock company1602
- Lombe's silk throwing mill1718-1721
- Joint-stock company (VOC)
- Amsterdam Stock Exchange
- Industrial cost accounting