Every business owner knows how important it is to find the right accountant they provide so much more support that just filing your year end accounts. As Cheltenham Accountants know your finances are integral to your business and the relationship between business owner and accountant is an incredibly important one and one that Cheltenham Accountants Randall & Payne work hard to cultivate with all of their clients.

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Here are a few interesting facts that you may not know about accountants and the world of accounting.

• The world bookkeeping (and bookkeeper) are the only words in the English language that have 3 sets of double letters consecutively located in the word.
• Some famous stars started their working lives off in accountancy. These include Mick Jagger, Eddie Izzard and Robert Plant (from the band Led Zeppelin)
• There is a patron saint of accountants – St Matthew the Evangelist
• Accounting in a very basic form can be traced back thousands and thousands of years. Archaeologists found tokens that date back to ancient Mesopotamia around 7000 years ago and believe that these would have been used in the markets as an early form of trading in goods.
• Walter Diemar was an accountant by trade but he was also an inventor who brought to us bubblegum in 1928. It was originally a bright pink colour because that was the only dye he could get hold of at the time.

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• Al Capone who was a notorious Chicago crime boss who thought to be guilt of numerous crimes including murder but it was the accountancy firm dealing with his business that eventually exposed him for some of his illegal behaviour when he was arrested and successfully convicted of tax evasion.
• Accountants in America don’t just deal with money. Every year a team of accountants spend hours and hours counting the Oscar Academy Award ballots. Each one by hand.
• Many of the words we use in accounting have originated from French and Latin words. The word accounting comes from “compter” which is French for counting and the words “debit” and “credit” come from Latin words meaning “he owes” and “he trusts”
• Luca Pacioli is the Italian mathematican that is thought to be the founding of modern day accounting, He created the first financial book based on double entry accounting in around 1494. This is the method that all modern day accounting and all accounting software is based upon.