Digital Financial Reporting

Before writing was invented, between about 5,000 and 10,000 years ago farmers in Mesopotamia used physical object to count crops and animals.  In about 3200 BC the first spreadsheet was invented when these farmers began documenting information using clay tablets in Cuneiform; partitioned their clay tablet into rows, columns, and cells.  This was single-entry accounting.

In 1211 AD a bank in Florence, Italy was the first documented use of double-entry accounting.  Between 1299 AD and 1300 AD double-entry accounting came of age and in 1494 AD during the Renaissance, Venetian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli published a book, Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita documenting this approach.

Accountants have a special name for the spreadsheets, or tables, that these farmers invented and Italian bankers perfected. Accountants call these ledgers. 

A ledger is simply a place where you record information such as transactions.

A fact ledger is a new type of ledger that offers utility and leverage when accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis is done in a digital environment.  Another accountant and I came up with this idea when trying to figure out how to actually implement accounting process automation.  The document Introducing the Fact Ledger summarizes our ideas related to this tool.

Fact ledgers can work with single-entry accounting, double-entry accounting, or even triple-entry accounting.

Do you have any ideas that might improve on our vision of the fact ledger?  If so, give us a shout.