Bookkeeping and Cost Accounting for Factories (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Bookkeeping and Cost Accounting for FactoriesThe author of this treatise was a bookkeeper and cost accountant for some years before he became ail engineer, and many times during his career as an engineer and as manager of works he had occasion to install systems of bookkeeping and cost accounting and to audit books. In this way, and by reading much of the extensive literature on accounting, he has kept in touch for over forty years with the development of accounting practice. More than twenty years ago he was urged by the president of one of the largest manufacturing corporations in New England to write a book on factory cost accounting, but he was then too busy with other matters and the suggested book had to be postponed to the indefinite future. Some three years ago the suggestion was repeated at a conference of several professional accountants, who agreed that the literature on cost accounting was in a most chaotic shape and was altogether unsatisfactory.The author then began a serious re-study of the subject, by reading many of the most recent books, both English and American (there has been a large crop of them in the last ten years), re-reading the articles on accounting that had appeared in Engineering Magazine and in the Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers during the last twenty-five years, and by visiting many factories and conferring with t heir managers and cost accountants. The result of the study was to confirm the statement that the word "chaos" properly describes the bulk of the literature, and the cost accounting methods in most factories. There are many good books 011 bookkeeping and ordinary accounting, and some useful books on certain parts of the general subject of cost accounting, but there seems to be a lack of books covering a wide field and representing the host modern practice.The principal faults of the existing books may be listed as follows:1. Ovcr-conscrvatism. Adher…