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Abbreviations save both time and effort while communicating information, especially when it comes to numbers and quantities. Now that we’ve covered the essential abbreviations and how to use them let’s discuss how to maintain consistency when using them. There are other variations that you may come across, is it m or mm for million such as “mil” or “mio” (short for million) but they are not recommended for formal writing in English. Although different accountants have adopted Roman and Greek traditions (or transitioned to modern abbreviations), context is what unlocks the knowledge needed to understand the term. You won’t typically see the power of 10 rule applied to financial documents today. Most financial sums are tracked in ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands.

My personal usage is $10K to refer to ten thousand and $10MM to refer to ten million, and avoid the usage of the single “M” altogether. In financial operations – where every zero in a number is crucial – abbreviating large figures helps reduce potential errors when handling complex calculations and transactions. Therefore, understanding and using this term bookkeeping is crucial in the field of finance.

For example, if a company has revenue of $45,000,000, it can be written as $45MM. This makes financial documents easier to read and understand, particularly when dealing with large numbers. The term “MM” originates from the Roman numeral M, which stands for one thousand. It is commonly used in financial documents, accounting, and stock market where space is a concern. The finance term MM, denoting ‘Million’, is important due to its wide usage in financial documents, reports, and communications to represent large quantities of money. So, “10,000,000” could become “10MM” or “10M.” “10 million” is also acceptable, but don’t use “10mill,” which is overly informal — stick to the more common abbreviations.
Million can also be represented using “mn” and “m,” so an individual may see Accounts Payable Management $4m, $4mn or simply $4 million. Another option is to use the “M” for 1,000 and represent $4 million as $4,000M. Every new term greater than million is one thousand times as large as the previous term.


So when you read a price quote in $100/M, it means $100 per 1,000 units. Proofread your work thoroughly, focusing primarily on the use of abbreviations. Ensure that the context of the abbreviation is clear and that the abbreviation is suitable for that context. Though there is no globally accepted standard, there are country-specific standards.

We’ll explain the correct abbreviation for “million” in this article. An abbreviation for million is most often seen in financial documents and paperwork. You can also use the abbreviation “mil” in casual conversation. In fact, the largest number with a single-word name in ancient Greek was 10,000. It was called murios and borrowed into Late Latin as myrias.