This site is about double-entry bookkeeping: how it works, and what the first printed book that described it, Luca Pacioli’s treatise of 1494, actually says. The site is by me, Anthony Mellor FCA, after fifty years in accountancy and business.
In October 2026 the original 15th century printed pages were read by several Gen AI, the leading ones, which also made a modern Italian version and an English version, under my direction and control, otherwise they get confused. Five machines (four models from three companies) read the pages separately and their readings were compared. Where they disagreed, the differences were settled against the page images, and two of those models gave blind second opinions. Any or all of them can still be wrong, and part of the my job has been to test their answers and work out how to correct those that can be shown to be wrong. My Pacioli pages describe what has been checked and what has not. A human academic who has worked on this text for 20 years reckons it takes at least a month to translate one page to his own standard of being reasonably satisfied. At that rate the 25 pages of this treatise would take about 25 months. I had the idea on 6 October 2026; the machines began reading on 9 October and made their reading and translation drafts in about five days, to a different standard: they are drafts, not yet proofread by a person. Is it any good? This remains to be seen, literally. My view is that the A I can separate out all that is agreed and show us the aspects remaining to be discussed so allowing the best use of our time without investing over and over again in the same consensus. In my professional world we used to call this "management by exception".
New here? Start with “How this was made” if you are interested in the AI, or “Understand debits and credits” if you are interested in accounting.
Also by the author: KISS, a cash-flow and financial control tool for people who run a business.