Accountant in 1979: VisiCalc puts the ledger on a screen

The modern profession is younger and more precisely dated: it begins in 1854, when Scotland's accountants received a royal charter and invented the "chartered accountant," and in 1896, when New York created the first "certified public accountant." Between those dates and now, securities law made the audit compulsory, the spreadsheet swallowed the paper ledger, and a trade of quill-wielding counting-house clerks became a global profession of more than three million credentialed members.

This page follows the craft from clay tokens to cloud software: how double entry spread from medieval Italy to the whole world, what accountants actually do all day and in busy season, who reached the top of the profession — a friar, a potter, a whistleblower — how much the work pays on four continents, and how much of it artificial intelligence can honestly be expected to take.

What does an accountant actually do? Accountants record, summarize and verify financial information. The work splits into strands: financial accounting produces the statements outsiders rely on; management accounting produces the costs and budgets managers steer by; auditors independently check other people's figures; tax accountants compute and defend what is owed. Much of the day is reconciling — making two independent records of the same money agree.