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Ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Rome, and Greece kept accounting records for taxing and spending on public works
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The Phoenicians created an accounting alphabet to prevent Egyptians from cheating them
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Egyptians invented the first bead and wire abacus for accounting uses
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The auditing profession originated to double check what came in and out, reported orally
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Businesses were required to keep accounting records in many of the Italian Republics. These records were mainly to keep track of day to day transactions and credit accounts
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Luca Pacioli wrote the paper "Everything about Arithmetic, Geometry, and Proportion.", a study of the way merchants kept records of their debits and credits to make their businesses more efficient.
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Double entry records were innovated over time. For example, the East India Company introduced capital and dividend distribution. This made them change their financial accounting and managerial accounting.
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During the Industrial Revolution, accounting began to grow as companies needed to stay efficient and finance.
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During this time accounting was more important to prevent fraud and scandals. The U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) was made by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
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All standards for U.S. GAAP have been located into the codification, which reveals all of the current practices and standards, as well as developing areas of accounting standards. Accounting can now be done with systems like Peachtree or Quickbooks. Due to this, there is more of a need to review the transactions rather than post them.
