The paper is devoted to the consideration of the content of the monuments of accounting practice at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, which has been studied a little in Russian historiography. The diversity of the surviving receipt and expenditure books, which form the basis of the accounting methodology of the period under review, is revealed; the main problems of their study are listed. The necessity of combining the efforts of specialists from different directions of historical research to study the monuments of the period under review has been substantiated.