"THREEFOLD BOOKKEEPING" BY MATTHÄUS SCHWARZ

In: Accounting historians journal: a publication of the Academy of Accounting Historians Section of the American Accounting Association, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 39-51

Abstract

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."