Since the beginning of humanity, bookkeepers have developed specific sets of accounts in response to Man’s constantly changing needs,
It is ‘the law of utility’. This continuum such as this is not only specific to something which can be counted, but rather, it is the process we go through with all material and spiritual disciplines.
To develop a new accounting model, you first need to look back into the past, to apprehend fully the present situation. This has the added advantage of familiarizing you with all the background elements leading up to the new development. In other words, it fosters an awareness of the remarkable potential these developers had in the past, as their creations clearly testify, while recognizing that it would have been impossible for them to seize all the opportunities that would have cropped up at that time.
The vestiges of movable and immovable property accounts inscribed on clay tablets dating from around 3000 B.C. are a prime example of this. Many of these items constitute exchange standards or account units, i.e. real currency.
The origin of credit goes back a very long way. It was already mentioned from as early as 2000 B.C. in the legal documents of the Hammurabi Code. This resulted in the birth of “the single-entry system of book-keeping” in “Doit et Avoir’ of third-party accounts.
A new form of bookkeeping became necessary in Greece during the 7th century B.C. following the introduction of metal coins, which featured Assets and Liabilities in Expenditures and Revenues.
The long slow development process of bookkeeping by slaves, for their Master’s assets, finally resulted in double-entry accounting in one single set of accounts closed by the essential ‘Master’ balance account “.
Training a bookkeeper required long studies because the recording of a single movement was subject to one or more entries, whether or not it was balanced in Assets and Liabilities, in several sets of accounts, as well as in the currency of the transaction and then in the currency of the account.
During the 6th century B.C., maritime trade in Greece developed in such a way that the contributions of several investors had to be recorded together, while the benefits of these trade deals had to be shared out among themselves. This led to the breakup of the ‘Master’ account which in turn paved the way to Capital and Profit and Loss accounts.
In 1494 Luca Pacioli presented the Venetian model of accounting, which does not show ‘Debit and Credit’ columns in its General Journal.
In 1796 Sir Thomas Edward Jones created two additional columns in the General Journal. All the modifications made thereafter stem from this contribution, ultimately leading to the double-entry accounting system used today.
The latter is made up of two sets of accounts: “Balance sheet ” and “Profit and loss “ accounts which streamline the balance registered in ‘debit and credit’ by putting all the different entries into one single monetary unit, i.e. by removing the ancient tradition of keeping physical units.
The Modular Accountings presented are taken from the ‘Fundamental Theory of Accounting’ developed by the author. ‘Modular Accounting’ is “pure accounting” according to the meaning given by Doctor Joseph-H Vlaemminck in his doctoral thesis on applied economics “History and Doctrines of Accounting”.
‘Pure accounting’ means that it is possible to record any kind of fact in any kind of unit. To achieve this, the author has specifically used all the results that became available in the transition from rhetorical algebra to symbolic algebra.
An accounting module is a “pure accounting” which reintroduces the quantitative measurements inscribed on clay tablets while integrating essential qualitative ratings previously unrecorded. These measurements and notes serve as the basis upon which the correct value expressed in monetary units can be justified.
The pursuit of this path leads to the Balance Sheet and the Profit and Loss Account for company, intangible, ecological and environmental assets, in qualitative and quantitative units respectively. These qualitative and quantitative situations are the foundations upon which the Full Balance Sheet and the Full Profit and Loss Account can be justified in monetary units for company social, intangible, ecological and environmental assets of the ‘Matter’ recorded as a unit.
