Double-entry bookkeeping
Italian merchants invent a way to check their own arithmetic, and modern accounting follows.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 194 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Double-entry bookkeeping spreads among Italian merchants from the fourteenth century and is codified by Luca Pacioli in 1494. Recording every transaction twice, as debit and credit, means the books must balance — an internal error check — and it separates the business from the owner as an entity with its own accounts. Combined with bills of exchange, which move value without moving coin, it makes long-distance commerce and the Medici bank possible.