Two-Currency, Nostro and Vostro Acoounts: Historical Notes, 1400-1800‪.‬

INTRODUCTION According to Luca Pacioli, it was not important in which currencies (moneys) an entry would be recorded in the memorial by the person involved in the particular transaction, whether this was, for example, the merchant himself, his wife, child, or employee. The memorial was the book of original entry. The entries in it were then in due course entered in proper form--in an "accountantly" manner--in the journal, and from there in the relevant accounts in the ledger. The entries in the ledger, however, had to be made in the same currency in the money columns although in the narrative part of the entries "you can name the currencies that occur, whether ducats or florins or gold scudi or, whatever currency it may be" [Pacioli, 1494, chs. 6, 36]. In practice, the prefatory information given at the beginning of the ledger sometimes indicated the particular currency in which entries would be made (in the money columns). For example, the ledger (1453-1454) of the Florentine partnership of Della Casa and Guadagni, active in Geneva, states that the ledger will be kept in scudi "di 64 per marcho d'oro" [Cassandro, 1976, p. 199]. The opening statement in Sir Thomas Gresham's journal (1546), now in the custody of the Mercers' Company, London) declares, inter alia, that it "shalbe holden by poundes shillings and pence of money of Englonde."