Did you know that invoices go back a long way – as in thousands of years, and the practice of invoicing can even be traced back to prehistoric animal bones?
It’s true.
We’ve done some digging around ourselves and have come up with six fascinating facts about invoices and their history that we bet you’d wish you’d known about earlier!
Tally Sticks
According to Wikipedia, a tally stick was “an ancient memory aid device used to record and document numbers, quantities and messages”.
Evidence of these ancient aide-memoire gadgets goes back tens of thousands of years, as far back as 30,000 BC, and maybe even much longer!
They were originally made out of animal bones, and marks were notched on them to represent transactions, record numbers and other information, primarily of a fiscal/legal nature.
These evolved into split tallies by splitting a wooden stick lengthwise. The person who paid in advance was given the long portion (stock), and the short piece (foil) was given to the recipient so they could both keep a record of the transaction.
An ancient IOU.
Even back then, the importance of good record-keeping and debt tracking was recognized.
Tally, by the way, is the Latin word for stick. And the expression ‘to tally’ means to add up/keep a record.
Cue the Cuneiform
It was several thousand years (and no doubt animal bones and wooden sticks) later, that the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq) came up with cuneiform script – the earliest known writing system.
With this system, notches were made on moist clay tablets with a reed stylus.
The term cuneiform means wedge-shaped because the marks made by the stylus were wedge-shaped. It is believed that cuneiform was invented to help keep track of agricultural and commodity transactions, such as cattle, bread and honey.
They were, in effect, the first accounts.
Incredibly enough, although it evolved considerably, the cuneiform script was used for over three millennia from the 31st century BC to the second century AD.
You could say the period of its use was beyond biblical!
Homer’s Odyssey
Possibly of most interest for Invoice Ninjas who majored in the Classics (or just fans of the Brad Pitt movie Troy) is that thousands of tablets using Linear B script were discovered by archaeologists in the 1950s at Nestor’s Palace in Greece (as in Homer’s Nestor King of Pylos).
Linear B was an ancient Greek script using syllabic and ideographic signs that symbolized commodities and was used around 1200 BC.
Most of these tablets were thought to be invoices and receipts. The famous Pylos Tablet invoice included a list of deliverable goods.
Let’s hope they paid up on time!
An Invoice Renaissance
Going forward in time to the Renaissance era, merchants developed what we now call the double-entry bookkeeping system. (As an aside, ‘bookkeeping’ is one of the only words in the English language with three consecutive double letters!).
This was a serious ‘game changer’ because, under this new system, each entry is recorded in at least two accounts as either a debit or credit, with the amounts recorded as debits matching those recorded as credits.
The system also included much more information than before, such as the names of the client and a description (and quantity) of the goods, as well as the cost and the date of payment.
This innovation heralded in what we now call modern-day bookkeeping and, of course… computer invoicing systems!
Printing Press
The invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the 1440s had a huge impact on all written communications, media and reporting, including invoices and their mass production. Forget animal bones and cuneiform clay tablets; technically, you could now format and print invoices – and lots of them.
And by the 19th century, bookkeeping machines and other variations of them were used to create, track and record invoices. As time went on, these devices became more sophisticated but were nevertheless quite expensive. Therefore, invoicing was still typically done by people and by hand.
E-invoicing
What we now know as e-invoicing started its journey with the emergence of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), which has been around since the 1960s. EDI allowed companies to communicate electronically.
Since then, e-invoicing has come on leaps and bounds and is now not just the preserve of large corporations. In fact, e-invoice mandates in some countries require businesses to adapt to electronic means to comply with tax reporting legislation.
The 2020 global COVID pandemic also helped increase the use of e-invoices (and digital transformation in general).
Invoice Ninja
Invoice Ninja was launched in early 2014 to build a suite of apps specifically for freelancers and small businesses to help them get paid faster.
We have developed a user-friendly interface so you can create and send professional-looking, custom-branded invoices electronically. We integrate with a wide range of payment gateways, enabling you to invoice clients and receive payments with a single click.
We also offer project time-tracking and inventory features, to name just a few of the advanced features available. Check out more about them all here.
No bones, sticks, clay tablets, or clunky machines.
Just client-friendly features that make you easier to deal with and enable you to get paid effortlessly, fast and on time.
