every purchase order so placed may be identified by a consecutive 
serial number. 
The procedure in connection with the payment of vendors’ invoices 
will be considered in the next following section. 
ACCOUNTING PROCEDURE 
DouBLE ENTRY ACCOUNTING. 
Without question, the only satisfactory accounting procedure for 
a chamber of commerce, or for any other commercial enterprise, is 
based upon double entry. No large commercial enterprise finds any 
other method of accounting at all adequate, and the small enterprise 
that attempts to employ a so-called simplified procedure does not have 
an adequate control over its finances. Abbreviated systems of account- 
ing are a snare and a delusion. They make it difficult for the chamber 
secretary to set up convincing statements of the chamber’s financial 
condition.” They are almost impossible to audit satisfactorily. Fur- 
thermore, with a double entry accounting system of the right kind, 
no more labor will be used in the long run than with a makeshift system 
where the entries originally appear to be made with greater simplicity. 
Present-day accounting by double entry is a highly developed, 
efficient method; yet in operation it is simplicity itself. Procedure 
described herein and the forms presented embody those principles 
which have been found to be sound in practice and which employ 
those clerical mechanisms which reduce the labor of accounting to a 
minimum. 
The secretary of a small chamber of commerce may say that he 
has no one qualified in his organization to handle a double entry system. 
While that may be true, nevertheless the knowledge of double entry 
bookkeeping has become so universal that the secretary in the smallest 
community who employs but one stenographer can well insist on 
securing an employee who is soundly grounded in the fundamentals 
of double entry. 
Books AND Forms 
A word now as to the character of the system proposed herein. 
In the first place, specially prepared and printed forms are recom- 
mended for every chamber of commerce, except perhaps the very 
smallest. In the long run the cost of forms is the least of the expenses 
of accounting, and the forms should be right, in the first place, if the 
best results are to be secured. 
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