Process of recording commercial transactions
in a systematic and established procedure.
These records provide the basis for the
preparation of accounts. The earliest-known
work on double-entry book-keeping, a system
in which each item of a business transaction
is entered twice - as debit and as credit -
was by Luca Pacioli, published in Venice in
1494. The method he advocated had, however,
been practised by Italian merchants for
several hundred years before that date. The
first English work on the subject, by the
schoolmaster Hugh Oldcastle, appeared in
1543.