Many readers tolerate mathematics rather than enjoying it, so let me reassure such readers that there is no need whatever for you to digest this Appendix. You can ignore it completely and this will not jeopardise your ability to understand the rules of business financial management.

However, for those who are comfortable with some mathematical material I am going to share with you the underpinning of Luca Pacioli's hidden code for two reasons. First, because in the absence of such mathematics it may continue to be regarded by some readers as arbitrary, and this would be to miss a crucial point. Second, because it seems to me that a great deal of time is now wasted on accounting procedures that should be automated, but are not because their designers did not understand how everything in accounting is joined up by Pacioli's plumbing.

I repeat here as Figure A1.1 the English translation of the extract from Luca Pacioli's work that we discussed in Chapter 1.