The advent of double-entry-based costing practices in the British engineering industry: Ransomes of Ipswich, 1856-1863

The history of accounting in all countries is punctuated by significant gaps in our knowledge. For Britain, where topics such as cost accounting have been the subject of a substantive research effort, there is still much we do not know. It has been suggested that engineers played an important role in the development of costing during the nineteenth century but that such activity occurred outside the double-entry bookkeeping system. The lack of relevant contemporary literature and surviving business records has made it difficult to examine the validity of such claims. This study reviews the surviving evidence from the agricultural implement manufacturer, Ransomes of Ipswich, in an attempt to provide a better understanding of the emergence of costing within the engineering sector during the 1850s and 1860s.