bookkeeping

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The practice or profession of recording the accounts and transactions of a business.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The art of recording pecuniary transactions in a regular and systematic manner; the art of keeping accounts in such a manner as to give a permanent record of business transactions from which the true state or history of one's pecuniary affairs or mercantile dealings may at any time be ascertained.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The art of recording pecuniary or business transactions in a regular and systematic manner, so as to show their relation to each other, and the state of the business in which they occur; the art of keeping accounts. The books commonly used are a daybook, cashbook, journal, and ledger. See daybook, cashbook, journal, and ledger.
• noun the method of keeping books by carrying the record of each transaction to the debit or credit of a single account.
• noun a mode of bookkeeping in which two entries of every transaction are carried to the ledger, one to the Dr., or left hand, side of one account, and the other to the Cr., or right hand, side of a corresponding account, in order tha� the one entry may check the other; -- sometimes called, from the place of its origin, the Italian method.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Accounting: the skill or practice of keeping books or systematic records of financial transactions, e.g. income and expenses.
• verb Present participle of bookkeep.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the activity of recording business transactions