Editing Double-entry bookkeeping (section)

== History ==
{{Main article|History of accounting}}
[[File:Cotrugli - Della mercatura, 1602 - 122.jpg|thumb|''Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto'' by [[Benedetto Cotrugli]], cover of 1602 edition; originally written in 1458]]
The earliest extant accounting records that follow the modern double-entry system in Europe come from [[Amatino Manucci]], a [[Florence|Florentine]] merchant at the end of the 13th century.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://130.74.92.202:82/record=b1000778 |first=Geoffrey A. |last=Lee |year=1977 |title=The Coming of Age of Double Entry: The Giovanni Farolfi Ledger of 1299–1300 |journal=Accounting Historians Journal |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=79–95 |jstor=40697544|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170627232023/http://130.74.92.202:82/record=b1000778 |archive-date=27 June 2017 |url-status=dead|doi=10.2308/0148-4184.4.2.79 }}</ref>  Manucci was employed by the Farolfi firm and the firm's ledger of 1299–1300 evidences full double-entry bookkeeping. Giovannino Farolfi & Company, a firm of [[Florence|Florentine]] merchants  headquartered in [[Nîmes]], acted as [[moneylender]]s to the [[Archbishop of Arles]], their most important customer.<ref>Lee (1977), p. 80.</ref> Some sources suggest that [[Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici]] introduced this method for the [[Medici bank]] in the 14th century, though evidence for this is lacking.<ref>{{cite book|page=97|title=The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494|last=de Roover|first=Raymond|year=1963|authorlink=Raymond de Roover|publisher=Beard Books|isbn=9781893122321}}</ref>

The double-entry system began to propagate for practice in Italian merchant cities during the 14th century. Before this there may have been systems of accounting records on multiple books which, however, did not yet have the formal and methodical rigor necessary to control the business economy. In the course of the 16th century, Venice produced the theoretical accounting science by the writings of [[Luca Pacioli]], Domenico Manzoni, Bartolomeo Fontana, the accountant Alvise Casanova<ref> Vittorio Alfieri, La partita doppia applicata alle scritture delle antiche aziende mercantili veneziane, Torino, Ditta G.B. Paravia e comp., 1891, pp. 103-148, Nabu Public Domain Reprints.</ref> and the erudite [[Giovanni Antonio Tagliente]].

[[Benedetto Cotrugli]] (Benedikt Kotruljević), a [[Republic of Ragusa|Ragusan]] merchant and ambassador to [[Naples]], described double-entry bookkeeping in his treatise ''[[Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto]]''. Although it was originally written in 1458, no manuscript older than 1475 is known to remain, and the treatise was not printed until 1573. The printer shortened and altered Cotrugli's treatment of double-entry bookkeeping, obscuring the history of the subject.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Yamey |first=Basil S. |date=January 1994 |title=Benedetto Cotrugli on bookkeeping (1458) |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585209400000035 |journal=Accounting, Business & Financial History |language=en |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=43–50 |doi=10.1080/09585209400000035 |issn=0958-5206}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Sangster |first1=Alan |last2=Rossi |first2=Franco |date=2018-12-26 |title=Benedetto cotrugli on double entry Bookkeeping |url=http://www.decomputis.org/ojs/index.php/decomputis/article/view/332 |journal=De Computis - Revista Española de Historia de la Contabilidad |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages=22 |doi=10.26784/issn.1886-1881.v15i2.332 |s2cid=165259576 |issn=1886-1881|doi-access=free }}</ref> [[Luca Pacioli]], a [[Franciscan friar]] and collaborator of [[Leonardo da Vinci]], first codified the system in his [[mathematics]] [[textbook]] ''[[Summa de arithmetica|Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità]]'' published in [[Venice]] in 1494.<ref>[http://acct.tamu.edu/smith/ethics/pacioli.htm Luca Pacioli: The Father of Accounting<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110818055709/http://acct.tamu.edu/smith/ethics/pacioli.htm |date=18 August 2011 }}</ref> [[Pacioli]] is often called the "father of accounting" because he was the first to publish a detailed description of the double-entry system, thus enabling others to study and use it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://basicaccountinghelp.com/bookkeeping-instructions-from-the-mid-fifteenth-century/|title=La Riegola de Libro, Bookkeeping instructions from the mid-fifteenth century|access-date=26 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171229112252/http://basicaccountinghelp.com/bookkeeping-instructions-from-the-mid-fifteenth-century/|archive-date=29 December 2017|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Livio |first=Mario |author-link=Mario Livio |title=The Golden Ratio |publisher=Broadway Books |year=2002 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/goldenratio00mari/page/130 130–131] |isbn=0-7679-0816-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/goldenratio00mari/page/130 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41582244 |title=Is this the most influential work in the history of capitalism? |date=23 October 2017 |access-date=23 October 2017 |website=bbc.com}}</ref>

In [[early modern Europe]], double-entry bookkeeping had theological and cosmological connotations, recalling "both [[Lady Justice|the scales of justice]] and the symmetry of God's world".<ref>
{{cite book
| last1                 = Poovey
| first1                = Mary
| author-link1          = Mary Poovey
| title                 = A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society
| url                   = https://books.google.com/books?id=AQ5ADoAjmd4C
| publisher             = University of Chicago Press
| date      = 1998
| page                  = 54
| isbn                  = 9780226675268
| quote                 = In the late sixteenth-century [...] number still carried the pejorative connotations associated with necromancy [...]. [...] [D]ouble-entry bookkeeping helped confer cultural authority on numbers. It did so by means of the balance [...]. For late sixteenth-century readers, the balance conjured up both the scales of justice and the symmetry of God's world.
}}
</ref>