Search results

In 1518, when nothing but Paciolo's "Summa" had been printed in the world of bookkeeping, Matthäus Schwarz, who was a bookkeeper of the Fuggers, wrote a manuscript on bookkeeping known as "Threefold Bookkeeping." This manuscript showed an illustration of three kinds of bookkeeping methods, of which the first and second methods aroused the most interest and research in ways of comparison with one another. This paper will attempt to show how the first and second methods are an integrated part of and incorporated into the third method of "Threefold Bookkeeping" system as a whole: and to exemplify the superiority that "bookkeeping in practice" has to "bookkeeping in text."

This article brings to light the neglected contribution of Grammateus, the author or Ayn New Kunstlich Buech (A New Skill Book) which, although basically a mathematics text, contained a section on bookkeeping in the style of Paciolo's Summa. His work is analyzed to prove the technical competence and the historical nature of the bookkeeping system which he propounded. In order to substantiate the conclusions, the full translation of the first edition (1521) is included in modern English.