Numbers

Double-Entry Accounting

How It's Used

“The development of double-entry bookkeeping in Europe. In Weber’s view, this was a phenomenon of major importance in opening the way for the regularising of capitalistic enterprises.”

"Mr. Summers is pushing a version of single-entry Keynesian bookkeeping, which holds that if the government hands out cash to workers they will spend it and 'stimulate' the economy. But the money the government would thus 'inject' in the economy has to come from somewhere. That is, it has to be raised in taxes or borrowed, which means it is taken from someone else in the private sector. Under more accurate double-entry bookkeeping, this stimulus is likely to be minuscule."

“In 'Madame Bovary,' a provincial wife takes not only to love and extramarital sex as an escape from boredom, but also — more dangerously — to overspending. She poisons herself when her unpaid creditor threatens to expose her double life. Had Emma Bovary but learned double-entry bookkeeping and drawn up a budget, she could easily have gone on with her hobby of adultery.”

"Washington's first record dates to when he was 15 -- a list of books he had bought. In the years thereafter, Washington seems to have noted every bag of seed he ever bought. He documented his gambling losses...

"He detailed business matters with double-entry bookkeeping in ledgers running to 100 pages or more.

"'He was extraordinarily careful with his accounts. He checks them. Inevitably, they balance,' Crackel said. 'He is, I think, probably the nation's first commercial farmer, whose interest on the farm was to make money.'"

Also Known As (AKA)

Double-Entry Bookkeeping

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