wanderbooks/docs/spec/sources/pacioli-1494.md

Pacioli, Particularis de computis et scripturis (1494)

The first published description of double-entry bookkeeping: Treatise XI of Luca Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita (Venice, 1494), in John B. Geijsbeek's English translation, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping (Denver, 1914). Both are in the public domain in the United States (published 1494 and 1914); archive.org's metadata for its other copy of the book (ancientdoubleent00geijuoft) reads NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT.

These are the rules wanderbooks' engine still enforces: every entry is a double entry; the trial balance's debits equal its credits; one money throughout the ledger; the book is written only forward; a mistake is corrected by an equal entry on the opposite side, never erased; expense and income accounts close into profit and loss, and profit and loss into capital.

Source: Internet Archive item cu31924030162147 (Cornell University Library scan), OCR full text https://archive.org/download/cu31924030162147/cu31924030162147_djvu.txt, retrieved 2026-10-13, SHA-256 241b39da6d18a01db80c0239c6ab42d632b614754b7df00dee86ff3afa9b0af9. The excerpts below are that OCR text verbatim, by line range, OCR artifacts included (e.g. {bUancio} for bilancio). Geijsbeek printed the 1494 Italian in facsimile beside his translation; where the OCR of a facsimile page falls inside a range it is kept as is.

Chapter 12: cash and capital

OCR lines 4403–4417:

CHAPTER 12.

HOW THE ENTRY SHOULD BE MADE INTO THE JOURNAL BY MEANS OF THE DEBIT
AND THE CREDIT, WITH MANY EXAMPLES. THE TWO OTHER EXPRESSIONS USED IN
THE LEDGER, THE ONE CALLED "CASH," AND THE OTHER "CAPITAL," AND WHAT
SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD BY THEM.

With the name of God you shall begin to enter into your Journal the first item of your Inventory,
that is, the quantity of cash that you possess, and in order to know how to enter this Inventory into the
Ledger and Journal, you must make use of the two other expressions {termini) ; the one called "cash"
{cassa) and the other "capital" {cavedale). By cash is understood your property or pocketbook {borscia:
from bursa, or bag) ; by capital is understood the entire amount of what you now possess.

This capital must always be placed as creditor {creditore) in all the principal mercantile Ledgers and
Journals and the cash always debtor. Never at any time in the management of your business may cash be

Chapter 27: the profit and loss account, closed into capital

OCR lines 6355–6380:

After the other accounts, there must follow one which is named variously, according to different localities. Favor
and Damage (Pro o Danwo), or Profit and Damage {Utile a Danno) , or Increase and Deficit (.Avanzi e Desavanzi).
Into this other accounts in the Ledger have their remainders, as we will show when we speak of the trial balance.
You should not put these entries in the Journal, but only in the Ledger, as they originate from overs or shorts In the
debits and credits, and not from actual transactions. You shall open the account this way:

Profit and Loss debit (dee dare — shall give), and Profit and Loss credit (dee havere — shall have).

That is, if you had sustained a loss in a special line of merchandise and In this account in your Ledger would
show less in the credit than the debit, then you will add the difference (soldo) to the credit so as to make it balance,
and you shall enter as follows:

Credit (dee havere — shall have), per Profit and Loss, so much, which I enter here in order to balance on account
of loss sustained — and so on, and you will mark the page of the Profit and Loss account where you write down the
entry. Then you go to the Profit and Loss account and In the debit column you shall enter as follows:

Profit and Loss debit (dee dare — shall give), on this day, to such and such loss sustained, so much — which has
been entered in the credit of said merchandise account in order to balance it at page so and so. If the account of this
special merchandise would show a profit instead of loss — that Is, more In the credit than in the debit — then you will
proceed In the opposite way. The same you shall do one by one for all accounts with merchandise or different things,
whether they show good or bad results, so that your Ledger always shows the accounts in balance — that is, as much
In the debit as in the credit. This is the condition the Ledger will be in if it is correct, as I will explain to you when
I am talking of the balance. In this way you will see at a glance whether you are gaining or losing, and how much.
And this account must then be transferred for its closing (saldo) into the capital account, which Is always the last
in all the ledgers and is consequently the receptacle of all other accounts, as you will understand.

Chapter 31: correcting a mistaken entry (storno)

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CHAPTER 31.

HOW TO TAKE OUT ONE OR MORE ENTRIES WHICH BY MISTAKE YOU MIGHT HAVE
ENTERED IN A DIFFERENT PLACE FROM THE RIGHT ONE, WHICH MAY HAPPEN THROUGH
ABSENTMINDEDNESS.

The good bookkeeper should also know how to take out — or as they call it in Florence "stornare" —
an entry which by mistake you might have written down in the wrong place as, for instance, if you had
entered it as a debit instead of a credit entry ; or when you have to enter it in the account of Mr. Mar-
tino and you put it in the account of Mr. Giovanni.

For at times you cannot be so diligent that you are unable to make mistakes. The proverb says :
He who does nothing, makes no mistakes : he who makes no mistakes, learns nothing.

And you shall correct this entry as follows: If you had placed this entry in the debit column
while you should have put it in the credit column, in order to correct this, you shall make another
entry opposite this one in the credit for the same amount. And you shall say thus : On such and such
day for the amount which has been entered opposite here under the debit and should have been put in

the credit, see page, etc., and you shall write down in the column of figures: L S G P

which you wrote down by mistake in the other column. In front of these two entries you shall mark
a cross or any other mark so that when you make out an abstract or statement of the account you
should leave these entries out. After you have made this correction it is just as if you had written
nothing in the debit column. You then make the entry in the credit column as it should have been
and everything will be as it should have been.

Chapter 34: closing expenses into profit and loss, and profit and loss into capital

OCR lines 6838–6875:

to those accounts which you should not care to transfer to Ledger A, as, for instance, your own personal
accounts of which you are not obliged to give an account to another, as, for instance, small mercantile ex-
penses, household expenses, income and expenses and all extraordinary expenses — rentals, pescioni, feudi or
livelU, etc. All these accounts should be closed {saldore) in the Cross Ledger into the favor and damage ac-
count, or increase and deficit, or profit and damage account, as it is sometimes called. You shall enter them
in the debit column, as it is rare that these expense accounts should show anything in the credit side. As
I often have told you, add the difference to the column, either debit or credit, which shows a smaller total,
saying: Per profit and loss in this account, see page, etc. By doing so, you shall have closed {saldore) all
these different accounts iu the profit and loss account through which then, by adding all the debit and all
the credit entries, you will be able to know what is your gain or loss, for with this balance aU entries are
equalized ; the things that had to be deducted were deducted, and the things that had to be added were
added proportionately in their respective places. If this account shows more in the debit than in the credit,
that means that you have lost that much in your business since you began. If the credit is more than the
debit, that means that in the same period of time you have gained.

After you know by the closing {saldorai) of this account what your profit or loss is, then you shall close
this account into the capital account in which, at the beginning of your management of your business, you
entered the inventory of aU your worldly goods. You shall close the account in this way : If the losses
are in excess — ^from which state of affairs may God keep every one who really lives as a good Christian —
then you have to add to the credit in the usual manner, saying : On such and such day, Per capital on
account of losses in this account, see page so and so, value, etc. Then you shall cancel the account with a
diagonal line in debit and credit, and put in the total amount of aU the debit entries, as well as of the credit
entries, which should be equal. And then in the capital account, you shall write in the debit column:
Capital debit {dee dare — shall give) on such and sueh day, per profit and loss account on account of losses
as marked down in the credit column of said account in order to close {per saldo), value, etc. :

L , S , G , P

If instead there should be a profit, which wiU happen when the profit and loss account would show
more in the credit than in the debit, then you shoixld add the difference to the debit side to make the equali-
zation, referring to the capital account and respective page. You should credit the same amount to the capi-
tal account, making the entry on the credit side where all the other goods of yours have been entered, per-
sonal or real. Therefore, from the capital account, which always must be the last account in the entire
Ledger, you may always learn what your fortune is, by adding together aU the debits and all the credits,
which you have transferred in Ledger A.

Then this capital account should be closed and carried forward with the other accounts to Ledger
A, either in total or entry by entry. You can do either way, but it is customary to transfer only the total

Chapter 36: summary of the rules for keeping a ledger

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CHAPTER 36.

SUMMARY OF THE RULES AND WAYS FOR KEEPING A LEDGER.

All the creditors must appear in the Ledger at the right hand side, and all the debtors at the left.
All entries made in the ledger have to be double entries — that is, if you make one creditor, you must
make some one debtor.

Each debit (shall give — dee dare) and credit (shall have — dee havere) entry must contain three things,
namely : the day, the amount and the reason for the entry.

The last name in the entry of the debit (in the Ledger) must be the first name in the entry of the
credit. On the same day that you make the debit entry, you should make the credit entry.

By a trial balance {bUancio) of the Ledger we mean a sheet of paper folded lengthwise in the middle,
on which we write down all the creditors of the Ledger at the right side and the debtors at the left side.
"We see whether the total of the debits is equal to that of the credits, and if so, the Ledger is in order.

The trial balance of the Ledger should be equal — that is, the total of the credits — I do not say creditors
— should be equal to the total of the debits — I do not say debtors. If they were not equal there would be a
mistake in the Ledger.

The cash account should always be a debtor or equal. If it were different, there would be a mistake
in the ledger.

You must not and cannot make any one debtor in your book without permission or consent of the per-
son that has to appear as debtor ; if you should, that account would be considered false. Likewise you can-
not add terms or conditions to a credit without permission and consent of the creditor. If you should,
that statement would be untrue.

The values in the Ledger must be reckoned in one kind of money. In the explanation of the entries,
you may name all sorts of money, either ducats, or lire, or Florence, or gold scudi, or anything
else ; but in writing the amount in the column, you should always use the same kind of money through-
out — that is, the money that you reckon by at the beginning should be the same all through the Ledger.

The debit or credit entries of the cash account may be shortened, if you desire, by not giving the rea-
son for the entry ; you may simply say from so and so, for so and so, because the reason for the entry is
stated in the opposite entry.

If a new account should be opened, you must use a new page and must not go back even if there was
room enough to place the new account. You should not write backward, but always forward — that is, go
forward as the days go, which never come back. If you do otherwise, the book would be untrue.

If you should make an entry in the Ledger by mistake which should not have been made, as it happens
at times through absentmindedness, and if you wanted to correct it, you shall do as follows: Mark with
a cross or with an "H" that special entry, and then make an entry on the opposite side under the same
account. That is, if the erroneous entry was on the credit side — say, for instance, for L 50, S 10, D 6 —
you make an entry in the debit side, saying: Debit (dee dare) L 50, S 10, D 6, for the opposite entry
cross marked which is hereby corrected, because it was put in through a mistake and should not have
been made. Then mark with a cross this new entry. This is all.

When the spaces given to any particular account are all filled so that no more entries can be made
and you want to carry forward that account, do in this way : Figure out the remainder of the said ac-
count — that is, whether it is debit or credit remainder. Now let us say that there is a credit remainder
of L 20, S 4, D 2. You should write on the opposite side, without mentioning any date, as follows : Debit
L 28, S 4, D 2, per remainder (per resto) of this account carried forward in the credit at page so and so.
And it is done. The said entry is to be marked in the margin so, namely: Bo, which means "resto" (re-
mainder) , but this does not mean that it is a true debit entry although it is on the debit side. It is rather
the credit which is transferred through the debit side. Now you must turn the pages and keep on turn-
ing them until you find a new page where you shall credit that account by naming the account and mak-
ing a new entry without putting down any day. And you shall say in the following manner : So and so
is credit (dee havere) L 28, S 4, D 2, per remainder (per resto) of account transferred from page so and so,
and you should mark this entry in the margin by Ro, which means "resto" remainder, and that is done.

In the same way, as I have shown you, you shall proceed if the account has a debit remainder — that is,
what you enter on the credit side you should transfer to the debit side.