Roman empire[edit]
Part of the
Res Gestae Divi Augusti from the
Monumentum Ancyranum (Temple of Augustus and Rome) at
Ancyra, built between 25 BCE - 20 BCE.
By the time of Emperor
Augustus (63 BC - AD 14), the
Roman government had access to detailed financial information as evidenced by the
Res Gestae Divi Augusti (
Latin: "The Deeds of the Divine Augustus"). The inscription was an account to the Roman people of the Emperor
Augustus' stewardship, and listed and quantified his public expenditure, including distributions to the people, grants of land or money to army veterans, subsidies to the
aerarium (treasury), building of temples, religious offerings, and expenditures on theatrical shows and
gladiatorial games, covering a period of about forty years. The scope of the accounting information at the emperor's disposal suggests that its purpose encompassed planning and decision-making.
[6]
The Roman historians
Suetonius and
Cassius Dio record that in 23 BC,
Augustus prepared a
rationarium (account) which listed public revenues, the amounts of cash in the
aerarium (treasury), in the provincial
fisci (tax officials), and in the hands of the
publicani (public contractors); and that it included the names of the freedmen and slaves from whom a detailed account could be obtained. The closeness of this information to the executive authority of the emperor is attested by
Tacitus' statement that it was written out by Augustus himself.
[12]
Records of
cash,
commodities, and transactions were kept scrupulously by military personnel of the
Roman army. An account of small cash sums received over a few days at the
fort of
Vindolanda circa AD 110 shows that the fort could compute
revenues in cash on a daily basis, perhaps from sales of surplus supplies or goods manufactured in the camp, items dispensed to slaves such as
cervesa (
beer) and
clavi caligares (
nails for boots), as well as commodities bought by individual soldiers. The basic needs of the fort were met by a mixture of direct
production,
purchase and
requisition; in one letter, a request for money to buy 5,000
modii (measures) of
braces (a cereal used in brewing) shows that the fort bought provisions for a considerable number of people.
[13]
The
Heroninos Archive is the name given to a huge collection of
papyrus documents, mostly letters, but also including a fair number of accounts, which come from
Roman Egypt in 3rd century AD. The bulk of the documents relate to the running of a large, private
estate[14] is named after Heroninos because he was
phrontistes (
Koine Greek:
manager) of the estate which had a complex and standarised system of accounting which was followed by all its local farm managers.
[15] Each administrator on each sub-division of the estate drew up his own little accounts, for the day-to-day running of the estate, payment of the workforce, production of crops, the sale of produce, the use of animals, and general expenditure on the staff. This information was then summarized as pieces of papyrus
scroll into one big yearly account for each particular sub-division of the estate. Entries were arranged by sector, with cash expenses and gains extrapolated from all the different sectors. Accounts of this kind gave the owner the opportunity to take better
economic decisions because the information was purposefully selected and arranged.
[16]
Medieval and renaissance periods[edit]
Double-entry bookkeeping[edit]
When medieval Europe moved towards a
monetary economy in the 13th century,
sedentary merchants depended on bookkeeping to oversee multiple simultaneous transactions financed by
bank loans. One important breakthrough took place around that time: the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping,
[7] which is defined as any bookkeeping system in which there was a
debit and credit entry for each transaction, or for which the majority of transactions were intended to be of this form.
[17] The historical origin of the use of the words "debit" and "credit" in accounting goes back to the days of single-entry bookkeeping, which had as its chief objective keeping track of amounts owed by customers (
debtors) and amounts owed to
creditors.
Debit in
Latin means "he owes" and
credit in Latin means "he trusts".
[18]
The earliest extant evidence of full double-entry bookkeeping appears in the Farolfi ledger of 1299-1300.
[7] Giovanno Farolfi & Company, a firm of
Florentine merchants headquartered in
Nîmes, acted as
moneylenders to the
Archbishop of Arles, their most important customer.
[19] The oldest discovered record of a complete double-entry system is the
Messari (
Italian:
Treasurer's) accounts of the city of
Genoa in 1340. The
Messari accounts contain debits and credits journalised in a
bilateral form and carry forward balances from the preceding year, and therefore enjoy general recognition as a double-entry system.
[20]
Luca Pacioli's
Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità (early Italian: "Review of
Arithmetic,
Geometry,
Ratio and Proportion") was first printed and published in
Venice in 1494. It included a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping,
"Particularis de Computis et Scripturis" (Latin: "Details of Calculation and Recording"). Pacioli wrote primarily for, and sold mainly to, merchants who used the book as a reference text, as a source of pleasure from the
mathematical puzzles it contained, and to aid the education of their sons. His work represents the first known printed treatise on bookkeeping; and it is widely believed
[by whom?] to be the forerunner of modern bookkeeping practice. In
Summa de arithmetica, Pacioli introduced symbols for
plus and minus for the first time in a printed book, symbols which became standard notation in Italian Renaissance mathematics.
Summa de arithmetica was also the first known book printed in Italy to contain
algebra.
[22]
Ragusan economist
Benedetto Cotrugli's 1458 treatise
Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto contained the earliest known manuscript of a double-entry bookkeeping system, however Cotrugli's manuscript was not officially published until 1573. In fact even at the time of writing his work in 1494 Pacoili was aware of Cotrugli’s efforts and credited Cortrugli with the origination of the double entry book keeping system.
[23][24]
Although Luca Pacioli did not invent double-entry bookkeeping,
[25] his 27-page
treatise on bookkeeping contained the first known published work on that topic, and is said to have laid the foundation for double-entry bookkeeping as it is practiced today.
[26] Even though Pacioli's treatise exhibits almost no
originality, it is generally considered
[by whom?] as an important work, mainly because of its wide circulation; it was written in the
vernacular Italian language, and it was a printed book.
[27]
Pacioli saw accounting as an ad-hoc ordering system devised by the merchant. Its regular use provides the merchant with continued information about his business, and allows him to evaluate how things are going and to act accordingly. Pacioli recommends the Venetian method of double-entry bookkeeping above all others. Three major books of account are at the direct basis of this system:
- the memoriale (Italian: memorandum)
- the giornale (Journal)
- the quaderno (ledger)
The ledger classes as the central document and is accompanied by an alphabetical
index.
[28]
Pacioli's treatise gave instructions on recording barter transactions and transactions in a variety of currencies – both of which were far more common than today. It also enabled merchants to audit their own books and to ensure that the entries in the accounting records made by their bookkeepers complied with the method he described. Without such a system, all merchants who did not maintain their own records were at greater risk of theft by their employees and agents: it is not by accident that the first and last items described in his treatise concern maintenance of an accurate
inventory.
[29]
The Renaissance cultural context[edit]
Accounting as it developed in Renaissance Europe also had moral and religious connotations, recalling the judgment of souls and the audit of sin.
[30]
Financial and management accounting[edit]
The development of
joint-stock companies (especially from about 1600) built wider audiences for accounting information, as investors without firsthand knowledge of their
operations relied on accounts to provide the requisite information.
[31] This development resulted in a split of accounting systems for internal (i.e.
management accounting) and external (i.e.
financial accounting) purposes, and subsequently also in accounting and disclosure regulations and a growing need for independent attestation of external accounts by
auditors.
[8]
Modern professional accounting[edit]
The modern profession of the chartered accountant originated in
Scotland in the nineteenth century. During this time, accountants often belonged to the same associations as
solicitors, and the latter solicitors sometimes offered accounting services to their clients. Early modern accounting had similarities to today's
forensic accounting:
[32]- "Like forensic accountants today, accountants then incorporated the duties of expert financial witnesses into their general services rendered. An 1824 circular announcing the accounting practice of one James McClelland of Glasgow promises he will make “statements for laying before arbiters, courts or council.”[32]
In July 1854 The Institute of Accountants in Glasgow petitioned
Queen Victoria for a
Royal Charter. The Petition, signed by 49 Glasgow accountants, argued that the profession of accountancy had long existed in Scotland as a distinct profession of great respectability, and that although the number of practitioners had been originally few, the number had been rapidly increasing. The petition also pointed out that accountancy required a varied group of skills; as well as mathematical skills for calculation, the accountant had to have an acquaintance with the general principles of the
legal system as they were frequently employed by the courts to give evidence on financial matters. The Edinburgh Society of accountants adopted the name "Chartered Accountant" for members.
[33]
By the middle of the 19th century, Britain's
Industrial Revolution was in full swing, and
London was the financial centre of the world. With the growth of the
limited liability company and large scale manufacturing and logistics, demand surged for more technically proficient accountants capable of handling the increasingly complex world of high speed global transactions, able to calculate figures like asset depreciation and inventory valuation and cognizant of the latest changes in legislation such as
the new Company law, then being introduced. As companies proliferated, the demand for reliable accountancy shot up, and the profession rapidly became an integral part of the business and financial system.
