Seattle Method

Accounting is one of the strongest, oldest, most mature, and most rigorously enforced provenance preserving systems humans have ever build.  Every accounting system is a provenance machine for economic activity of an economic entity. Part of that provenance machine is the double-entry bookkeeping (a.k.a. double entry accounting) mathematical model. The first documented use of double-entry bookkeeping was in 1211 by a bank in Florence. This meant that for the first time, a trusted family member did not have to keep the books.   Around 1300 double-entry bookkeeping came of age. In 1494 during the Renaissance, Venetian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli   published a book, Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita (Sum of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality) which formally documented and standardized double-entry bookkeeping. Accounting records where economic events came from, documents who performed them, pres...

Accounting, the universal technology of accountability , is one of the most mature, enduring and robust information processing systems ever devised in human history. With over more than 7,000 years of incremental, iterative refinement; accounting has evolved into one of the most stable, resilient, and interoperable information systems ever developed.  The system includes accounting of business events related to financial transactions, the reporting of that financial information, assurance of that information in the form of an audit when deemed necessary, and analysis of that financial information. Accounting is grounded on a foundation of transparency, traceability , and reliability enabled by robust internal quality control. Its core mechanisms, most notably double entry bookkeeping and financial statement articulation , create a system in which every recorded business event is cross checked, internally validated, and mathematically constrained . These aspects are mechanical and ...