Re-examining Mr Mellis’ Appendix: a Further Step in the Quest for Management Accounting’s Origins

This paper reviews the treatise on arithmetic which accompanies John Mellis’ 1588 text ‘A Brief Instruction and manner how to keep books of accounts’. The treatise, entitled ‘A Short and plain Treatise of Arithmetic in whole numbers, comprised into a briefer method than hitherto hath bin published’ contains material of considerably more substance than its title suggests. Past assessments of Mellis’ work have largely overlooked this supplementary appendix to Mellis’ ‘principal’ bookkeeping text. This recurrent omission has lead to under-estimation of the significance of Mellis’ place in the early bookkeeping literature. As this paper demonstrates, the arithmetical treatise embodies substantial significant and original material including the rudiments of a number of basic ‘management accounting’ techniques. This paper demonstrates the need to reassess the work of Mellis, both in the context of the ‘story’ of the management accounting and its place in the wider accounting literature. Why Re-Evaluate Early Accounting Texts? Yamey (1981) pointed to the dearth of source documents, in the form of actual sets of accounts, dating from the three centuries after the year 1500. He suggested that this lack of source documents could, in part, be made good by the study of bookkeeping texts published in that period. One such text is John Mellis’ ‘A Brief Instruction And Manner How To Keep Books Of Accounts’, published in London in 1588. Mellis’ text has been widely acknowledged and referred to by existing research into early bookkeeping texts. However, as this paper will demonstrate, this existing work has consistently underestimated Mellis’ place in the early accounting literature in general, and in particular with regard to the antecedents of cost and management accounting. Howieson (1994), in reviewing the ninth part of Pacioli’s ‘Summa’, to assess the author’s awareness of a framework of accounting principles, highlighted the fresh insights that are to be derived from the further study of early bookkeeping texts. In addition to providing detailed knowledge of bookkeeping, accounting and commercial practice, further review of early accounting texts can offer