Until the 1930s there were few rules for public company accounting. Even with our thousands of modern rules and standards accounting is a complicated process that is generally post-hoc. Receipts are collected, tabulated and entered. Bank accounts are compared against invoices and income assessed. Digital currency (e.g Bitcoin) could change this.

Bitcoin is an Internet-first currency. It's digital and instantaneous. When you cash a cheque the bank will place a hold on the amount of money because they don't actually receive the money for several days. Digital currency skips the antiquated banking system that relies on reconciling amounts over days.

If companies adopted Bitcoin for all of their income and expenses then they'd always have an accurate view of their finances. There might still be minor issues like pending refunds, etc. but it would be a mostly accurate picture. Instead of relying on forecasting and estimates business owners could know exactly how much money they have. Investors could receive automatically generated balance sheets every month to keep up-to-date on their portfolio companies. Banks could assess risk on a daily basis and offer better terms for loans. Financial fraud might be easier to detect (since there'd be many samples it would be harder to fake the "paper" trail and there would always be a blockchain record). "Bitcoin Accounting" would have hundreds of benefits.

The all-digital balance sheet is a long way off but could usher in a new era of corporate transparency.