Every year on November 10, specialists in one of the exact professions celebrate their professional holiday — International Accounting Day, which is often called Accountant's Day.
The need to introduce an international holiday has been discussed several times, despite the fact that many countries have established national accounting holidays.
The choice of the date of the holiday was the event of the late 15th century — On November 10, 1494, Luca Pacioli «All about arithmetic, geometry and proportion» (Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita) was published in Venice, in which the author tried to summarize knowledge about mathematics of that time.
One of the chapters of the book was called «About accounts and other records» (Particularis de computis et scripturis) and contained a detailed presentation of the accounting of Venice. This was the first printed work on the double-entry bookkeeping method, a work that served as the basis for the creation of some of the widespread works on commercial bookkeeping. The book described most of the accounting cycle as it is currently known.
Pacioli described the use of journal orders and accounting registers, and he also predicted that an employee would not be able to go to bed peacefully until the debit converged on the loan. The book also gave many other terms and examples; in a word, the book contained the special knowledge required for the full-fledged work of an accountant.
Luca Pacioli is called the «father of accounting», although he was neither the inventor nor the developer of the accounting system. He merely described the methods that Venetian traders used in their work during the Italian Renaissance.
The numerous details of the accounting techniques of the time, as outlined by Pacioli, became the basis that guided the accounting special texts and works over the next four centuries.
The best proof of the extreme significance of Pacioli's work is that his book was printed on November 10, 1494. And before, 50 years earlier, Johns Gutenberg invented printing with separate metal letters and signs, and it is known that printing a book at that time was still extremely expensive.
Postcard «November 10 — International Accounting Day (Accountant's Day)»