Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto written by Benedetto Cotrugli around 1400 was the first bookkeeping manuscript and trade manual.

[2][3][4][5][6] It is widely thought that the reason why Luca Pacioli (1445–1517) received credit as the father of accounting is because Cotrugli's work was not officially published until 1573.

"[10] An early copy of Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto from the end of the fifteenth century is at the National Library of Malta.

[4][13] The first English translation of the Libro de l'arte de la mercatura (The Book of the Art of Trade) edited by Carlo Carraro and Giovanni Favero, with a foreword by Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University, has been published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017, based on the critical edition of the original manuscripts made by Vera Ribaudo, University of Venice, published in May 2016 by Edizioni Cà Foscari, Venice.

Cotrugli wrote in his bookkeeping and merchandising trade manual that not only must a merchant be a bookkeeper-accountant, but that he must also be a good writer, a rhetorician and a man of letters being diplomatic all the while.