Originally a ledger was the name for a service book kept in one place in a church – “The curates should provide a book of the Bible in English, of the largest volume, to be a ledger in the same church for the parishioners to read on.”
The actual system of reconciling balances was invented by the famous and successful 15th century Italian banking family: the Medici. They developed the double entry system of tracking credits and debits in a ledger. Their Medici currency was once the most used in Europe, and the principles of their ledger system are still in use today – even if many are now computerized.
If you want to total up your financial transactions for the day, week or month, no doubt you will have some kind of ledger to record those ‘takings’ in. On the page in front of you the debits and credits are shown in different columns and there’s a balance when you begin and one when you end. The golden rule is that every debit recorded must have a credit, so that in the grand total when you finish, the debits equal the credits.
Contribution to Retail History
Through the ages, bookkeeping was tedious and time consuming, but a critical function of the retail business. And while it is hard to imagine this process being done by hand, considering today’s sophisticated methodology, which produces instantaneous results and projections based on prior data that can immediately influence strategic business decisions.