Historical context

Luca Pacioli ("parr-choh-lee" is widely credited with inventing double entry accounting some five hundred years ago. In the 1500's Pacioli needed a simple and easily accessible way to represent the two sides of the accounting duality. He didn't have color as an option so he settled on using location (left and right) to distinguish debits and credits in the ledger and journal.  

Sadly, for many learners the words debit and credit do not translate well. And the problem with left and right is that when you turn around, your left becomes your right and your right your left. Ouch.  Learning accounting has been a nightmare for many people.

With the advent of the desktop color printer, Accounting Comes Alive's idea was to substitute the concepts of debit and credit with colors, and to represent the general ledger spatially in two-dimensions, or three as shown below. People have used color before to represent aspects of accounting, but never in the fundamental way that Color Accounting does.

Since 1992 we have been refining and simplifying the Color Accounting system. Simplicity is hard to achieve, but we have worked relentlessly since then to make accounting simpler to grasp. 

We'd like you to experience it for yourself and see how profound simplicity can be.