The secret of double-entry bookkeeping: personification of accounts

DOI

10.2991/ies-18.2019.40How to use a DOI?

Keywords

double-entry bookkeeping, Luca Pacioli, personification of accounts, personalization of accounts

Abstract

Investigation is done on the personification of accounts and its use in the first printed works on double-entry bookkeeping. Examples of accounting entries, given in these books, are considered. Special attention is paid to medieval terminology and its relationship with the modern conceptual apparatus of accounting. It turns out which words and expressions can serve as modern equivalents for the Old Italian terms used by Luca Pacioli. The historical role of personification, as well as the personalization of accounts in the development of accounting, is studied. The hypothesis of this research is that the personalization of accounts was already known at the time of Pacioli and did not arise in the 18th century as it is usually assumed, and in his work, the great scientist, knowing about the personalization of accounts, made a conscious choice in favor of personification of accounts.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Alexander Kuznetsov
PY  - 2019/11
DA  - 2019/11
TI  - The secret of double-entry bookkeeping: personification of accounts
BT  - Proceedings of the Third International Economic Symposium (IES 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 141
EP  - 151
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/ies-18.2019.40
DO  - 10.2991/ies-18.2019.40
ID  - Kuznetsov2019/11
ER  -