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Double-entry bookkeeping records every transaction in two accounts at once: as a debit in one and a credit in the other. Because the two sides must always add up to the same total, a mismatch shows that something was recorded wrongly.

Double-entry bookkeeping

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The story behind the card

Say a shop buys stock for 100 florins in cash: the stock account goes up by 100 and the cash account goes down by 100, and the books still balance. The method grew out of the practice of Italian merchants in the late Middle Ages; the earliest surviving complete example is the 1299–1300 ledger kept by Amatino Manucci for a Florentine firm. In 1494 the Franciscan friar and mathematician Luca Pacioli, a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, described it in detail in a printed textbook published in Venice. That is why he is often called the father of accounting, although he did not invent it. Balanced books do not prove honesty, but they make many errors easy to spot, and the same logic still underlies company accounts today.

Türkçe oku
Çift taraflı kayıt sisteminde her işlem aynı anda iki hesaba yazılır: birine borç, ötekine alacak olarak. İki tarafın toplamı her zaman eşit olması gerektiğinden, tutmayan bir hesap bir yerde yanlış kayıt yapıldığını ele verir.

Diyelim ki bir dükkân 100 florinlik malı peşin alıyor: stok hesabı 100 artar, kasa hesabı 100 azalır ve defter yine denk kalır. Yöntem, Orta Çağ'ın sonlarında İtalyan tüccarların uygulamalarından doğdu. Bugüne ulaşan en eski eksiksiz örnek, Amatino Manucci'nin Floransalı bir şirket için 1299–1300'de tuttuğu defterdir. Leonardo da Vinci'nin dostu olan Fransisken rahip ve matematikçi Luca Pacioli, 1494'te Venedik'te basılan bir ders kitabında yöntemi ayrıntılı biçimde anlattı. Bu yüzden çoğu zaman “muhasebenin babası” diye anılır, ama yöntemi o icat etmedi. Denk bir defter dürüstlüğü kanıtlamaz, ama pek çok hatayı kolayca yakalatır. Şirket hesapları bugün de aynı mantıkla tutulur.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Double-entry bookkeeping
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