Cameral accounting was developed as early as the 16th century onwards in order to contribute to increased control of public money. Such a control demand does not seem to be of minor importance at the threshold of a new millennium as it was several centuries ago, and therefore Ludwig Mülhaupt in the excerpt above states that ‘Unfortunately there are very few researchers and practitioners who are interested in developing the cameral bookkeeping method, which is strongly to be regretted with a view to the importance of these questions.’ Most of the literature dealing with cameral accounting is published in German, and it seems to be known only to a small extent beyond the German speaking countries. The purpose of this article is therefore to present this historically important accounting model to a larger audience, allowing us to draw upon the experiences of cameral accounting in our continuous attempts to control public money, including the current international debate about the introduction of commercial (accrual) accounting in the public sector.

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Comparative International Governmental Accounting Research (CIGAR) has been carried out for some twelve years. CIGAR research is, however, generally unfamiliar to researchers not belonging to the CIGAR network. Therefore, the paper aims at presenting and discussing critically CIGAR research with its Contingency Model of Governmental Accounting Innovations and suggests how CIGAR research and its Contingency Model could be developed.

The most thoroughly debated format issue in designing a cash flow statement for a business enterprise concerns use ofthe direct or indirectmethod when reporting cash from operating activities. The article argues that the reason why we cannot solve this dilemma of using the direct or indirect method is related to the fact that our discussion is limited to using the axiom of double-entry bookkeeping within commercial accounting. In this article, however, the discussion of whether to use the direct or indirect method is not limited to commercial double-entry bookkeeping; it is also based upon another accounting framework, specifically designed to deal with cash transactions of governmental organizations: single-entry cameral accounting. The article argues that commercial accounting could learn from cameral accounting, separating cash from non-cash balance sheet changes, and directly prepare a cash flow statement from the single-entries of the cash transactions on the cash account, before they are entered into the double-entry bookkeeping system, to provide a performance result (revenues minus expenses) and related balance sheet information (assets, liabilities and equity). By applying this procedure, the direct method of preparing a cash flow statement becomes the natural method to use.

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