Ancient China is how the bookkeeping

The Western Zhou Dynasty has a special accounting official official income and expenditure of official property - the Secretary will be, and the income and expenditure of property to take the "month counting the year will be" (calculated for the counting of the sporadic, the total of the total calculation of the will be) method. In the Western Han Dynasty, there was also an account book called the "book of counting" or "book of books", which was used to register accounting matters. Later dynasties had officials to manage the income and expenditure of money and grain, taxes and property. In the Song Dynasty, the official hall, for money and grain reimbursement or transfer, to make up the "four columns of the inventory", through the "old tube (opening balance) + new income (income) = dismissal (expenditure) + see in (closing balance)" balance formula for the closing, settlement of the current period of the property Material changes and its results. This is a major achievement in the development of China's accounting discipline.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, with the development of handicrafts and commerce, there appeared the four-pillar-based "Dragon Gate Account", which divided all accounts into "In" (income), "Payment "(the expenditure), "deposit" (the assets), "the" (the liabilities) four categories, the use of "into the - payment = deposits The balance formula of "In - Contribution = Deposit - The" is used for accounting, and a general ledger is set up to make "classification records" and prepare the "In - Contribution Statement" (i.e., the income statement) and the "Deposit - The Statement" (i.e., the balance sheet). "(i.e., balance sheet), the implementation of two-track calculation of profit and loss, the number of profit and loss calculated on the two tables should be equal, known as the "combined gantry", so as to check all the accounts of the right and wrong.

After that, the "four-legged account" (also known as the "heaven and earth together account"), this method is: for each account to register both "to the account", but also to register This method is to register both the "coming account" and the "going account" for each account, in order to reflect the ins and outs of the same account. The "four pillars of the inventory", "Longmen account" and "four feet of the account" shows the development of different historical periods of China's accounting income and expenditure, reflecting the traditional and rigorous Chinese characteristics.