Accountant Town

In Accounting, the term “to foot” means to add and subtract a column of numbers that has been prepared by someone else to check this for mathematic accuracy. This is usually denoted by a tickmark (typically a backwards “F”) at the bottom of the total or subtotal. While it sounds awkward at first, the past tense of this term is footed, as in, “Yes, I footed the financial statements before I sent them to you.” For numbers that are added and subtracted horizontally rather than vertically, the term used is crossfoot, and a different tickmark would be used than the Foot tickmark to prevent confusion as to which direction the number were being calculated.