Luca Pacioli, a Fifteen Century Venetian monk, is widely credited as the first person to document the principles of double-entry bookkeeping and is even thought by some historians to have actually invented it. If true, Pacioli can hardly be faulted for thinking only about measuring physical assets. After all, the basic economic resources of Fifteenth Century Italy were materials, labor and capital. These same resources would serve as the 
basis for wealth creation for centuries to come, until the end of the industrial age.
Nowadays resources can be divided into four broad categories: resources that exist in physical form, also known as structural capital; resources that exist as cash and cash equivalents, also known as financial capital; resources that reside in people, also known as intellectual capital; and, lastly, resources that take the form of relationships, also known as relationship capital.
Over the past few decades, the most valuable resources of a typical company have shifted from structural capital to intellectual and relationship capital. The shift has led to a mismatch between accounting rules and market capitalizations. For some, the mismatch has become problematic.
The problem is that commonly-used accounting principles insist on treating physical resources such as smoke-billowing factories and inventory-filled warehouses as assets while treating intangible assets, including investments in customer service and satisfaction, as expenses, no matter that the latter may create far more economic value than the former. Perhaps the reason has to do with financial reporting’s originally intended audience: bankers, who naturally preferred to lend money against resources that could be repossessed, if necessary. Bankers would be hard pressed to repossess a relationship.
Invisible beans are hard to count. Can a company place a monetary value on the strength of its customer relationships? Can it impute a value for customer satisfaction or loyalty or advocacy — which, after all, drive customer profitability and overall brand equity? What, for example, is the value of a Facebook fan or a brand advocate actively tweeting and blogging about the benefits of a product or service?
