Venture Accounting in Medieval Business Management

From its beginning, accounting has been shaped by the needs of the business man and has in turn affected the handling of business problems. A clear illustration of this is the contrast between the system of accounts found in the ledgers of Florentine cloth manufacturers and the system of accounts found in the ledgers of Venetian merchants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cloth manufacturers such as the younger branch of the Medici arranged their entries under a Wage account, a Wool account, a Cloth Sales account, and so on, because their main concern was to keep track of these materials or obligations. The Venetians, being mainly exporters and importers, were concerned chiefly with keeping track of wares shipped, wares received, and amounts owed by or to agents. Accordingly, the distinctive, key accounts in Venetian books are (a) the accounts opened for each kind or lot of merchandise received, and (b) the accounts debited when wares were shipped. The latter are best called shipment, or venture, accounts. For example, when a Venetian merchant bought Florentine cloth to ship it to Constantinople, he opened a Florentine Cloth account in which he entered as debits all the costs of the cloth including the cost of packing it for shipment.