A Commentary on Vigano's Historical Development of Ledger Balancing Procedures, Adjustments and Financial Statements During the Fifteen, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries.

Abstract The article focuses on the historical development of ledger balancing procedure, adjustments and financial statements during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Economist Enrico Viganó published a monograph on trial balance procedures as they appear in the manuscripts of the early Italian writers who devoted their efforts to double entry bookkeeping. This is a comprehensive treatment of balancing procedures, which covers the trial balance, the controversial summa summarum, the use of informal and formal balance accounts, and the introduction of the use of financial statements. It is generally held that double entry evolved and spread throughout Europe not because of the arithmetical controls of ledger accounts which this system immediately permitted but because it afforded merchants a means of determining changes in their invested capital as a result of operations. Of course, double entry is not essential for this, since the same results can be achieved with a system of single entry, which, in fact, was the first system to evolve historically. Double entry developed when it became necessary to tie the accounts together in a systematic fashion and, as a result, bookkeeping controls by means of balancing procedures evolved.