西方会计英语Unit two Cost and management accounti

[00:04.28]Text 2.1   Overheads and their recove

[00:08.67]The costs of a business are of two types--direct and indirec

[00:13.43]The direct costs vary directly productio

[00:16.82]If one additional unit of production is made ,there will be a measurable increase in direct cos

[00:22.70]When one unit less in made,there will be similar measurable decrease in direct cost.

[00:28.19]Direct- or raw - material is normally the largest component 1 of direct cos

[00:34.06]It includes all items of material that are of sufficient size to warrant the effort of charging directly to the jo

[00:40.91]Small item, such as glue ,paint and small quantities of nails,screws and rivets,do not merit the clerical effort involved in charging directly to the job,and would be recovered as an overhea

[00:53.32]Direct wages will vary directly with production where remuneration is based upon piecework onl

[00:59.72]This means that a specific amount is paid when a production operation is successfully finishe

[01:04.60]If it is not finished, no payment is made

[01:07.74]In this book it is assumed that direct labour is of this natur

[01:11.63]Many organisations remunerate labour on the basis of a large basic wage,topped up with a productivity bonu

[01:18.99]The basic element is paid regardless of the level of productio

[01:22.65]In such cases wages will not vary directly with production,and fall into the category of an indirect cost or overhea

[01:31.14]Overhead is a general term applied 3 to all the costs involved in running a business,other than direct cost

[01:37.70]It covers the costs of running the works organisation 2; product research and development; the administration of the busines

[01:45.17]selling and distributing the product;and the cost of raising finan

[01:49.82]Overheads are diverse, covering the whole of the business organisation

[01:54.29]The management accountant has the problem of allocating 4 these costs to the individual product lines being manufacture

[02:00.48]Cost centr

[02:01.78]To help in this task, the organisation is split up into cost centre

[02:07.03]These are areas of activity to which are gathered all costs of a like natur

[02:11.81]A maintenance department, canteen and stores are examples cost centre

[02:17.06]Normally centres will identify with physical areas of the organisatio

[02:21.45]A stores cost centre is a physical area in which materials are kept,while awaiting issue to productio

[02:28.45]A centre may also not be identifiable with a physical are

[02:32.40]The finance cost centre will gather together all the costs of raising finance for the business,other than from owners or shareholder 5

[02:40.37]It is a function of the administration department ,and cannot be identified with a physical area of the busines

[02:47.13]Where a cost centre has a product which is being manufactured, it is known as a product centr

[02:53.51]Examples are a machine shop which is machining parts for assembly into the saleable product in an assembly sho

[03:01.26]Where a centre has a product that is saleable,thus giving rise to an income,it is also known as a profit centr

[03:08.34]It is capable of showing a profit or loss its overall activitie

[03:13.15]Cost allocati

[03:15.13]The management accountant's task is to allocate 6 the many ,diverse overheads, onto the cost of each product manufacture

[03:23.13]It is a major task requiring the use of many different bases of allocatio

[03:28.04]The allocation of direct cost to a product can be precis

[03:32.51]In the case of overhead allocation an element of logical guesstimatin enter

[03:38.04]There is a two-fold process, firstly to collect all overhead costs onto the product or profit centres

[03:44.84]and secondly 7 to load the overheads onto each product passing through the centr

[03:50.19]Text 2.2  Costs in their proper pla

[03:55.08]The peanut butter approach to accounting 8 is not a technique widely familiar to the UK's financial executive

[04:01.74]And yet, according to Professor Robert Kaplan of Harvard University ,if businesses do not become aware of the dangers of this strangely named type of accountin

[04:11.12]they risk making the wrong decisions and losing out to the competitio

[04:15.29]Kaplan is the co-author of a seminal 9 work on management accountancy

[04:19.58]Unlike most tracts 10 on this subject,Kaplan's book ,Relevance 11 Lost,is surprisingly readable and makes a compelling case that conventional accounting techniques are ill-equipped to deal with modern manufacturin

[04:32.85]Kaplan pointed 12 out, both in the book and in many articles before and after its 1987 publicatio

[04:38.91]that the modern factory environment was different from its equivalent only a decade ag

[04:44.81]Automation had replaced labour in the move to so-called world-class manufacturing,CAD-CAM and just-in-time production

[04:53.33]But the way of accounting for a manufacturing business had moved on in a centur

[04:58.87]Thus managers made important decisions about pricing and product mix with reference to figures which bore no resemblance to the true economics of making a batch 13 of widgets or a custom-built moto

[05:10.60]Costs were apportioned 14 to the products on the traditional basis of labour hours -an inappropriate approach given the automated 15 environmen

[05:18.35]and Kaplan argued, equivalent to a random 16 spreading of costs across the portfolio 17 of products -the peanut -butter approac

[05:27.37]In the last chapter of his book, Kaplan and his co-author offered some solution

[05:32.41]Managers should pay more attention to non-financial criteria 18 when making their decisions, they argue

[05:37.95]And they should scrutinise the precise make-up of the costs involved in opting 19 to manufacture one product rather than another,abandoning the traditional accoutant's distinctions between fixed 20 costs and variable costs,between direct and indirect cost

[05:53.93]Kaplan was one of the early exponents 21 of so-called activity-based costing (ABC)

[05:59.71]Under this approach, managers strive to spot'cost-drivers',i.e the factors influencing the costs of the produc

[06:08.30]The philosophy of ABC proved alluring 22 especially to the consultancy firms alert to a good marketing 23 opportunit

[06:16.11]But although most of the big accountancy firms have in recent years taken on squads 24 of ABC consultant 25

[06:22.59]it has always been very difficult to tease out any example of ABC being used in practice

[06:28.41]The argument against identifying clients is usually that they are doing so well out of ABC that competitors should not be allowed to find ou