Before electronic banking, how did wealthy businessmen keep track of their earnings?

Question

Before electronic banking, how did wealthy businessmen keep track of their earnings?

In: 399

Answer 1

There’s a whole field of professions called accountants. These were people who’s sole purpose was to keep track of financial transactions. Then every month or quarter (totally up to the business) all the accountants would put together reports and say “this division spent and made this much money in these ways” then the CFO or VP of finance would aggregate all these reports to determine how well a company is performing financially. *That person* would then write another report covering basically the same information but company wide. This report would go out to the rest of the company.