Using accounting records as historical data sources

This chapter offers advice to business, management and organisation historians on how to approach accounting records as rich data sources for historical research. Where detailed accounting records survive, historians can access information about the economic activities of organisations and can gain insight into the practical operations and internal management structure of organisations by observing how information was prepared, communicated and used by managers. Periodic financial statements (balance sheets and profit and loss accounts) are more likely to survive, often in official repositories, but they may be hard to interpret without knowledge of accounting conventions and practices at the time the statements were prepared. More recent challenges come from the increasing use of computerised accounting systems, which may make financial statements more accessible while increasing the risk that records of detailed transactions will be unavailable to the researcher.