A scribe, a reed and a tablet
More than five thousand years ago, in Uruk, a city on the banks of the Euphrates, a scribe presses a reed into a tablet of wet clay. He is not writing a poem or a law. He is noting how much barley went into the temple granary and how many rations came out. Many of the oldest texts that survive anywhere in the world are exactly that: accounts.
This is the story of how that need, knowing what you own, what you owe and to whom, crossed five millennia to reach your browser.
Before writing, there were accounts
Long before tablets, the peoples of the Near East counted with small clay tokens: a cone, a sphere or a disc for each measure of grain or each animal. According to the archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat, those tokens came to be kept inside sealed clay envelopes, marked on the outside to show what they held. Then the marks alone were enough, and marks on flat clay became signs. If her theory is right, writing was born to keep accounts.
The knots of the Incas
On the other side of the world, the Inca Empire ran the affairs of millions of people without alphabetic writing. It did so with khipus: cords of cotton or wool with knots, where the position of each knot marked units, tens and hundreds. Specialists called khipukamayuq recorded tribute, storehouses and censuses on them, and read them out before the authorities. It was a decimal system, portable and verifiable.
Venice, 1494
No single person invented double entry. Merchants and bankers in the Italian cities had used it since at least the fourteenth century: they recorded each transaction in two accounts, one as a debit and the other as a credit, so the books checked themselves. What was missing was someone to explain it to everyone.
In 1494, the Franciscan friar and mathematician Luca Pacioli published in Venice his Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita. One of its chapters, Particularis de computis et scripturis, described the Venetian method: three books (the memorandum, the journal and the ledger), every entry in two accounts and a balance that had to agree. Thanks to the printing press, then newly arrived, the method travelled across Europe. Pacioli was also a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, who drew the illustrations for another of his books, De divina proportione.
An invention of the human mind
Three centuries later, double entry was so natural in business that it found its way into literature. In Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, the merchant Werner calls it “one of the finest inventions of the human mind”.
Railways and the great factories of the nineteenth century brought new problems: how to spread the cost of a locomotive over the years it lasts, how to report to thousands of shareholders. The modern profession was born. In 1854 the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh received its royal charter, and with it the title of chartered accountant.
From the adding machine to the spreadsheet
For a century, books were kept by hand, with the help of adding machines and later of large computers in the companies that could afford them. In 1979 Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston launched VisiCalc for the Apple II, the first spreadsheet for personal computers. Many people bought an Apple II just to use it. For the first time, a small business could redo in seconds what used to take an afternoon with a calculator.
What has not changed
From clay to the cloud, almost everything changed: the medium, the speed, the reach. The essentials stayed the same. Every transaction is recorded once, in order and with its proof. Every amount goes in twice, as a debit and as a credit. And what was written is not erased: it is corrected with a new entry, so anyone can follow the story. The scribe of Uruk and the friar of Venice would recognise their rules in any well-kept set of books today.
Where Aconta Online comes in
Aconta Online is Pacioli's method in the browser: a journal book and a general ledger, every entry with its debit and its credit, and a system that refuses to record one that does not balance. What is posted is never edited; it is corrected with a reversal, as tradition demands. It works in fourteen languages and explains every term in its glossary. The first company is free, no card required.
Questions
Who invented accounting?
Nobody in particular. Accounts existed before writing, in Mesopotamia. Double entry was developed by Italian merchants and spread by Luca Pacioli in 1494.
Who was Luca Pacioli?
An Italian Franciscan friar and mathematician who in 1494 published in Venice the first printed description of double entry, in his Summa de arithmetica. He was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci.
What are the oldest accounting records?
Some of the oldest clay tablets from Mesopotamia, more than five thousand years old, are records of grain, livestock and temple rations.
What was a khipu?
A set of knotted cords the Incas used to record numbers: tribute, storehouses and censuses. The position of each knot gave its value in a decimal system.