Portrait of Pacioli attributed to Jacopo de’Barbari at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
Luca Pacioli wrote the book on accounting. He also wrote the book on algebra, geometry, mathematics, and arithmetic. It’s a musty old book by now, fragrant with the smell of parchment, dust, museum purifiers, and centuries passing. But Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita contains the world.
Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica, photo from the Smithsonian.
Da Vinci’s Buddy, Della Francesca’s “Admirer”
Pacioli was born in Tuscany, studied in Venice, taught in Rome, Croatia, Naples, and eventually settled in Milan under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza. Sforza supported another famous scholar: Leonardo.
Overhead is a term used by people who are overhead. No one wants overhead. No one wants to be overhead. No one wants to pay for overhead. But we’re all basically overhead.
Overhead, figuratively and literally. Photo from wikipedia.
Pity the Poor, Ignoble Overhead
Overhead refers to the costs a company incurs for expenses that are not directly related to whatever is being produced. Typically, these are “fixed” costs, costs that don’t change regardless of how many hamburgers are flipped or customer calls are handled. Examples might include everything from the CEO’s salary to the desks to the fees for Internet connectivity.
Most people, when they think about paying for a product, focus on only the product itself. I should only have to pay for the sandwich. How can it cost so much to make a pill? They think of a product as only the sum of the ingredients, rather than factoring in the distribution, packaging, design, testing, communication (advertising), inventory, or any number of other costs that have to exist in order for them to have the ability to buy that thing at that time at their convenience.
My generally-genteel wife, feet tucked demurely under an evening TV blanket, sipped her tea and then barked…
Nonprofit! N has to be for Nonprofit so you can tell those f@*$#@ing morons that nonprofit does not mean you can’t make a profit! Those idiots will even argue that it’s f@*$#@ing illegal to make a profit…
…so violently that the La-Z-Boy footrest nearly collapsed.
It’s been 25 years since she worked as the CFO at her second nonprofit entity, but I guess old wounds never heal. She says it was the thing about working for nonprofits that bugged her the most. People never understand what they are.
