La scrittura doppia ‘a bilancio corrente’ di Giuseppe Milanesio. Un’interessante variante del giornalmastro ormai dimenticata

In 1866 Giuseppe Milanesio formulated the “scrittura doppia a bilancio corrente”. This was a particular bookkeeping methodology characterized by the presence of only a main book, substantially obtained by merging Degranges’ day book ledger and the Filippini’s “budgetografia”. By the inventor opinion this daybook allows to estimate in a simple and fast way, with a daily cadence, the rest of all the factors of production, the debtors, the creditors and their amounts (without the need of other auxiliary books), the balance of all assets and liabilities, including the economic result, without need to settle accounts. Therefore, this book makes easy to settle account operations. As a matter of fact, most of the Milanesio's goals have to be scaled down because obtainable only from firms characterized by an extremely reduced number of recordings and accounts. In any case, this methodology has some validity, at least from a conceptual point of view, and it is surely interesting. However, maybe because it did not represent a real novelty in the field of the accounting studies at that time, it was at first ignored and, then, forgotten as its author. That being stated, the present work aims to illustrate Milanesio's methodology, highlighting its advantages and limits, after a brief introduction of the day book ledger and the “budgetografia” which have been the basis of his particular application.