“For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.”
Accounting is the horseshoe-nail of business.
The rhyme is a traditional proverb about how a small neglected detail can cascade into a large failure. Versions of it circulated in Europe for centuries; George Herbert collected one in 1640, and Benjamin Franklin printed another in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1758. Applied to a company, the neglected nail is the books: a missed reconciliation or a late close looks trivial until the numbers the business steers by turn out to be wrong, which is the case for 📝Weekly Accounting.