Popular accounts credit the Italian monk Luca
Pacioli with inventing double-entry bookkeeping around 1494.
The foundation of modern accounting began during the Renaissance period when Italian mathematician Luca
Pacioli published a book detailing the benefits of a double-entry system for recording accounting transactions that provided greater transparency to shareholders.
This was codified by Luca
Pacioli who published a major survey of mathematics in 1494 that included a 27-page description with examples of double entry book-keeping and its utility (Double Entry, How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance, by Jane Gleeson-White, W.W.
In 1494 Luca
Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and mathematician, codified their practices by publishing a manual on math and accounting that presented double-entry bookkeeping not only as a way to track accounts but as a moral obligation.
It is interesting to note that while Friscia is considered the "Father of the ultimates," an earlier Italian, Luca
Pacioli (1447-1517) from Tuscany, is recognized as the "Father of accounting."
The father of accounting, Luca
Pacioli, would publish an accounting textbook in 1494.
Only later in the 15th century, Luca
Pacioli, the father of accounting, from Italian origins, established the codification expression of double-entry to develop a financial accounting system, leading in time to modernize financial management and accounting.