3 Recording Financial Transactions and the Limitations of Accounting In order to understand the scorekeeping process, we need to understand how accounting captures information that is subsequently used for planning, decision- making and control purposes. This chapter describes how business events are recorded as transactions into an accounting system using the double-entry method that is the foundation of accounting. In this chapter we also show how the principles underlying accounting can limit the usefulness of accounting information as a management tool. Finally, the chapter introduces the notion of cost, and how cost may be interpreted in multiple ways. Business events, transactions and the accounting system Businesses exist to make a profit. They do this by producing goods and services and selling those goods and services at a price that covers their cost. Conducting business involves a number of business events such as buying equipment, purchas- ing goods and services, paying expenses, making sales, distributing goods and services etc. In accounting terms, each of these business events is a transaction. A transaction is the financial description of each business event. It is important to recognize that transactions are a financial representation of the business event, measured in monetary terms. This is only one perspective on business events, albeit the one considered most important for accounting purposes. A broader view is that business events can also be recorded in non- financial terms, such as measures of product/service quality, speed of delivery, customer satisfaction etc. These non-financial performance measures (which are described in detail in Chapter 4) are important elements of business events that are not captured by financial transactions. This is a limitation of accounting as a tool of business decision-making. Each transaction is recorded on a source document that forms the basis for recording in a business’s accounting system. Examples of source documents are invoices and cheques. The accounting system, typically computer based (except for very small businesses), comprises a set of accounts that summarize the transactions that have been recorded on source documents and entered into the accounting 26 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS system. Accounts can be considered as ‘buckets’ within the accounting system containing similar transactions. There are four types of accounts: ž Assets: things the business owns. ž Liabilities: debts the business owes. ž Income:therevenue generated from the sale of goods or services. ž Expenses:thecosts incurred in producing the goods and services. The main difference between these categories is that business profit is calculated as profit = income − expenses while the capital of the business (the owner’s investment) is calculated as capital = assets − liabilities Financial reports – the Profit and Loss account and Balance Sheet (see Chap- ter 6) – are produced from the information in the accounts in the accounting system. Figure 3.1 shows the process of recording and reporting transactions in an accounting system. Business is conducted through a series of Business events which are described in financial terms as Transactions and recorded on that are recorded in an Accounting system comprising a series of Accounts of which there are four types Assets Liabilities Income Expenses which determine the Capital of the business Profit of the business and which are presented in financial reports Balance Sheet Profit and Loss account Source documents Figure 3.1 Business events, transactions and the accounting system RECORDING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS 27 The double entry: recording transactions Businesses use a system of accounting called double entry, which derives from the late fifteenth-century Italian city-states (see Chapter 1). The double entry means that every business transaction affects two accounts. Those accounts may increase or decrease. Accountants record the increases or decreases as debits or credits, but it is not necessary for non-accountants to understand this distinction. Transactions may take place in one of two forms: ž Cash: If the business sells goods/services for cash, the double entry is an increase in income and an increase in the bank account (an asset). If the business buys goods/services for cash, either an asset or an expense will increase (depending on what is bought) and the bank account will decrease. ž Credit: If the business sells goods/services on credit,thedoubleentryisan increase in debts owed to the business (called debtors, an asset) and an increase in income. If the business buys goods/services on credit, either an asset or an expense will increase (depending on what is bought) and the debts owed by the business will increase (called creditors, a liability). When goods are bought, they become an asset called inventory (or stock). When the same goods are sold, there are two transactions: 1 The sale, either by cash or credit, as described above; and 2 The transfer of the cost of those goods, now sold, from inventory to an expense, called cost of sales. In this way, the profit is the difference between the price at which the goods were sold (1 above) and the purchase cost of the same goods (2 above). Importantly, the purchase of goods into inventory does not affect profit until the goods are sold. To record transactions, we need to decide: ž what type of account is affected (asset, liability, income or expense); and ž whether the transaction increases or decreases that account. Some examples of business transactions and how the double entry affects the accounting system are shown in Table 3.1. The accounts are all contained within a ledger, which is simply a collection of all the different accounts for the business. The ledger would summarize the transactions for each account, as shown in Table 3.2. In the example in Table 3.2 there would be a separate account for each type of expense (wages, cost of sales, advertising), but for ease of presentation these accounts have been placed in a single column. The ledger is the source of the financial reports that present the performance of the business. However, the ledger would also contain the balance of each account brought forward from the previous period. In our simple example, assume that the business commenced with £50,000 in the bank account that had been contributed by the owner (the owner’s capital). Table 3.3 shows the effect of the opening balances. Table 3.1 Business transactions and the double entry Business event Transaction Source document Accounts affected Type of account Increase or decrease Install new equipment for production Buy equipment for cash £25,000 Cheque Equipment Bank Asset Asset Increase £25,000 Decrease £25,000 Receive stock of goods for resale Purchase stock on credit £15,000 Invoice from supplier Inventory Creditor Asset Liability Increase £15,000 Increase £15,000 Pay weekly wages Pay wages £3,000 Cheque Wages Bank Expense Asset Increase £3,000 Decrease £3,000 Sell goods to customer from stock Sell stock on credit £9,000 Invoice to customer Debtors Sales Asset Income Increase £9,000 Increase £9,000 Deliver goods from stock The goods that were sold for £9,000 cost £4,000 to buy Goods delivery note Cost of Sales Inventory Expense Asset Increase £4,000 Decrease £4,000 Advertising Pay £1,000 for advertising Cheque Advertising Bank Expense Asset Increase £1,000 Decrease £1,000 Receive payment from customer for earlier sale on credit Receive £4,000 from debtor Bank deposit Bank Debtor Asset Asset Increase £4,000 Decrease £4,000 Pay supplier for goods previously bought on credit Pay £9,000 to creditor Cheque Bank Creditor Asset Liability Decrease £9,000 Decrease £9,000 RECORDING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS 29 Table 3.2 Summarizing business transactions in a ledger Account transaction Asset equipment Asset inventory Asset debtor Asset bank Liability: creditors Income: sales Expenses Buy equipment for cash £25,000 +25,000 −25,000 Purchase stock on credit £15,000 +15,000 +15,000 Pay wages £3,000 −3,000 +3,000 Sell stock on credit £9,000 +9,000 +9,000 The goods that were sold for £9,000 cost £4,000 to buy −4,000 +4,000 Pay advertising £1,000 −1,000 +1,000 Receive £4,000 from debtor −4,000 +4,000 Pay £9,000 to creditor −9,000 −9,000 Total of transactions for this period +25,000 +11,000 +5,000 −34,000 +6,000 +9,000 +8,000 Table 3.3 Summarizing business transactions with opening balances in a ledger Account Capital Asset equipment Asset inventory Asset debtor Asset bank Liability: creditors Income: sales Expenses Investment by owner +50,000 +50,000 Total of transactions for this period +25,000 +11,000 +5,000 −34,000 +6,000 +9,000 +8,000 Totals of each account at end of period +50,000 +25,000 +11,000 +5,000 +16,000 +6,000 +9,000 +8,000 Extracting financial information from the accounting system To produce financial reports we need to separate the accounts for income and expenses from those for assets and liabilities. In this example, we would produce a Profit and Loss account based on the income and expenses: Income 9,000 Less expenses: Cost of goods sold 4,000 Wages 3,000 Advertising 1,000 8,000 Profit 1,000 30 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS Table 3.4 Balance Sheet Assets Liabilities Equipment 25,000 Creditors 6,000 Inventory 11,000 Capital – Debtors 5,000 Owner’s original investment 50,000 Bank 16,000 Plus profit for period 1,000 Total capital 51,000 Total assets 57,000 Total liabilities plus capital 57,000 The Balance Sheet lists the assets and liabilities of the business, as shown in Table 3.4. The Balance Sheet must balance, i.e. assets are equal to liabilities. Although shown separately, capital is a type of liability as it is owed by the business to its owners. The double-entry system records the profit earned by the business as an addition to the owner’s investment in the business: assets = liabilities + capital This is called the accounting equation. However, a more common presentation of the Balance Sheet is in a vertical format, as follows: Assets: Equipment 25,000 Inventory 11,000 Debtors 5,000 Bank 16,000 57,000 Less liabilities: Creditors 6,000 51,000 Capital: Owner’s original investment 50,000 Plus profit for period 1,000 51,000 The accounting equation can therefore be restated as: capital (£51,000) = assets (£57,000) − liabilities (£6,000) There are some important points to note about the above example: 1 The purchase of equipment of £25,000 has not affected profit (although we will consider depreciation in Chapter 6). RECORDING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS 31 2 Profit is not the same as cash flow. Although there has been a profit of £1,000, the bank balance has reduced by £34,000 (from £50,000 to £16,000). 3 Most of the cash has gone into the new equipment (£25,000), but some has gone into working capital (again, this is covered in Chapter 6). Working capital is the investment in assets (less liabilities) that continually revolve in and out of the bank, comprising debtors, inventory, creditors and the bank balance itself (in this case £32,000 less £6,000 = £26,000). The distinction between profit, cash flow and capital investment – the purchase of assets – is a crucial one for accounting. Whether a payment is treated as an expense (which affects profit) or as a Balance Sheet item (called capitalizing the expense, and therefore not affecting profit) is important, as it can have a significant impact on profit, which is one of the main measures of business performance. Both the Profit and Loss account and the Balance Sheet are described in more detail in Chapter 6. In financial reporting, as Chapter 6 will show, there are strict requirements for the content and presentation of these financial statements. One of these requirements is that the reports (produced from the ledger accounts) are based on line items. Line items are the generic types of assets, liabilities, income and expenses that are common to all businesses. This is an important requirement as all businesses are required to report their expenses using the same accounts, such as rent, salaries, advertising, vehicle running costs etc. While this may not appear to be significant, it does cause a problem when a business is trying to make decisions based on cost information, because cost information is needed for products and services, rather than for line items. Principles and limitations of accounting There are some basic accounting principles that are generally accepted by the accounting profession as being essential for recording and reporting financial information. These are as follows. Accounting entity Financial reports are produced for the business, independent of the owners – the business and its owners are separate entities. This is particularly important for owner-managed businesses where the personal finance of the owner must be separated from the business finances. The problem caused by the entity principle is that complex organizational structures are not always clearly identifiable as an ‘entity’. The treatment by Enron of joint-venture vehicles that were not part of the Enron group for financial reporting purposes enabled ‘off-Balance Sheet’ financing that was a cause of that company’s collapse. Accounting period Financial information is produced for a financial year. The period is arbitrary and has no relationship with business cycles. Businesses typically end their financial 32 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS year at the end of a calendar or national fiscal year. The business cycle is more important than the financial year, which after all is nothing more than the time taken for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. If we consider the early history of accounting, merchant ships did not produce monthly accounting reports. They reported to the ships’ owners at the end of the business cycle, when the goods they had traded were all sold and profits could be calculated meaningfully. Matching principle Closely related is the matching (or accruals) principle, in which income is rec- ognized when it is earned and expenses when they are incurred, rather than on a cash basis. The accruals method of accounting provides a more meaningful picture of the financial performance of a business from year to year. However, the preparation of accounting reports requires certain assumptions to be made about the recognition of income and expenses. One of the criticisms made of many companies is that they attempt to ‘smooth’ their reported performance to satisfy the expectations of stock market analysts in order to maintain shareholder value. This practice has become known as ‘earnings management’. This has been particularly difficult in the telecoms industry, where income that should have been spread over several years has been taken up earlier, or where expenditure has been treated as an asset in order to improve reported profits. When this last practice was disclosed, it was a significant cause of the difficulties faced by WorldCom. Monetary measurement Despite the importance of market, human, technological and environmental fac- tors, accounting records transactions and reports information in financial terms. This provides a limited though important perspective on business performance. The criticism of accounting numbers is that they are lagging indicators of per- formance. In Chapter 4 we consider non-financial measures of performance that are more likely to present leading indicators of performance. An emphasis on financial numbers tends to overlook important issues of customer satisfaction, product/service quality, innovation and employee morale, which have a major impact on business performance. Historic cost Accounting reports record transactions at their original cost less depreciation (which is explained in Chapter 6), not at market (realizable) value or at current (replacement) cost. The historic cost may be unrelated to market or replacement value. Under this principle, the Balance Sheet does not attempt to represent the value of the business and the owner’s capital is merely a calculated figure rather than a valuation of the business. The Balance Sheet excludes assets that have not been purchased by businesses but have been built up over time, such as customer goodwill, brand names etc. The market-to-book ratio (MBR) is the market value of the business divided by the original capital invested. Major service-based companies RECORDING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS 33 such as Microsoft, which have enormous goodwill and intellectual property but a low asset base, have high MBRs because the stock market takes account of information that is not reflected in accounting reports. Going concern The financial statements are prepared on the basis that the business will continue in operation. Many businesses have failed soon after their financial reports have been prepared on a going concern basis, making the asset values in the Balance Sheet impossible to realize. As asset values after the liquidation of a business are unlikely to equal historic cost, the continued operation of a business is an important assumption. Conservatism Accounting is a prudent practice, in which the sometimes over-optimistic opinions of non-financial managers are discounted. A conservative approach tends to recognize the downside of events rather than the upside. However, as mentioned above, the pressure on listed companies from analysts to meet stock market expectations of profitability has resulted from time to time in ‘creative’ accounting practices (discussed in Chapter 7), such as those that led to problems at Enron and WorldCom. Disclosure The accounting standards and principles that have been applied in the financial statements are described in the financial reports. In the UK, there is a substantial body of principles governing what information is to be disclosed in financial reports (see Chapter 6), although in the US the disclosure requirements are rule based rather than principle based. As a result, it has been argued that it is easier to find ways to get around rules that are set in explicit terms than principles that are more general. The interpretation of the disclosure rules is important in auditing and led to criminal charges against accounting firm Arthur Andersen in the United States. Consistency The application of accounting standards and principles should be consistent from one year to the next. Where those principles vary, the effect on profits is separately reported under the disclosure principle. However, some businesses have tended to change their rules, even with disclosure, in order to improve their reported performance, explaining the change as a once-only event. These principles are applied in the collection, recording and reporting of financial information. It therefore follows that information used by managers for decision-making is subject to the same principles, and therefore to the same limitations. One of the most important pieces of financial information for line 34 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS managers is cost, which forms the basis for most of the following chapters. The calculation of cost is determined in large part by accounting principles and the requirements of financial reporting. The cost that is calculated under these assumptions may have limited decision usefulness. Cost terms and concepts Cost can be defined as ‘a resource sacrificed or foregone to achieve a specific objective’ (Horngren et al., 1999, p. 31). Accountants define costs in monetary terms, and while we will focus on monetary costs, readers should recognize that there are not only non-financial measures of performance but also human, social and environmental costs. For example, making employees redundant causes family problems (a human cost) and transfers to society the obligation to pay social security benefits (a social cost). Pollution causes long-term environmental costs that are also transferred to society. These are as important as (and perhaps more important than) financial costs, but they are not recorded by accounting systems (see Chapter 7 for a further discussion). The exclusion of human, social and environmental costs is a significant limitation of accounting. For planning, decision-making and control purposes, cost is typically defined in relation to a cost object, which is anything for which a measurement of costs is required. While the cost object is often an output –aproductorservice–itmay also be a resource (an input to the production process), a process of converting resources into outputs or an area of responsibility (a department or cost centre) within the organization. Examples of inputs are materials, labour, rent, marketing expenses etc. Examples of processes are purchasing, customer order processing, order fulfilment, despatch etc. Businesses typically report in relation to line items (the resource inputs) and responsibility centres (departments or cost centres). This means that decisions requiring cost information on business processes and product/service outputs are difficult, because most accounting systems (except activity-based systems, as will be described in Chapter 11) do not provide adequate information about those cost objects. For example, in a project-based business, published financial reports do not provide cost and revenue information about each project, but instead report information about salaries, rental, office costs etc. Businesses may adopt a system of management accounting to provide this information for management purposes, but rarely will this second system reconcile with the external financial reports because the management information system may not follow the same accounting principles described earlier in this chapter. The requirement to produce financial reports based on line items, rather than cost objects, is a second limitation of accounting as a tool of decision-making. The notion of cost is also problematic because we need to decide how cost is to be defined. If, as Horngren et al. defined it, cost is a resource sacrificed or forgone, then one of the questions we must ask is whether that definition implies a cash cost or an opportunity cost. A cash cost is the amount of cash expended [...]... Little, Brown and Company  52 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS Drury, C (20 00) Management and Cost Accounting (5th edn) London: Thomson Learning Eccles, R G (1991) The Performance Measurement Manifesto, Getting Numbers You Can Trust: The New Accounting Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Paperbacks Emmanuel, C., Otley, D and Merchant, K (1990) Accounting for Management Control (2nd edn) London: Chapman & Hall... Ballantine, J (1996) Performance measurement in service businesses revisited International Journal of Service Industry Management, 7(1), 6–31 Bromwich, M (1990) The case for strategic management accounting: The role of accounting information for strategy in competitive markets Accounting, Organizations and Society, 15(1 /2) , 27 –46 Bromwich, M and Bhimani, A (1994) Management Accounting: Pathways to... reports financial information using the double-entry system of recording financial transactions in accounts It has also identified how the principles underlying the accounting process can present limitations for managers in using financial information for decision-making This has a particular effect in relation to cost, which as we will see throughout Part II is crucial for non-financial managers In this... boundaries of management accounting research: Developing systems for performance management British Accounting Review, 33, 24 3–61 Otley, D T and Berry, A J (1980) Control, organization and accounting Accounting, Organizations and Society, 5 (2) , 23 1–44 Otley, D T and Berry, A J (1994) Case study research in management accounting and control Management Accounting Research, 5, 45–65 Otley, D T., Berry, A J and... preparers and users of accounting information may see the world This is expanded in Chapter 5 MANAGEMENT CONTROL, MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING 51 Conclusion In his review of management accounting in the UK, Otley (20 01) argued that we need to ‘put the management back into management accounting (p 25 9) Otley reinforced the Relevance Lost argument (Johnson and Kaplan, 1987) that management accounting had become... system inputs and causes behaviour to alter 2 Second-order control alters system objectives or the standards to be attained [Image not available in this electronic edtion.] Figure 4.4 Necessary conditions for control Reprinted from Emmanuel, C., Otley, D and Merchant, K (1990) Accounting for Management Control (2nd edn) London: Chapman & Hall  42 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS 3 Internal learning amends the predictive... origin of management accounting systems (p 25 9) The development of the Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 19 92; 1993; 1996; 20 01) has received extensive coverage in the business press It presents four different perspectives and complements traditional financial indicators with measures of performance for customers, internal processes and innovation/improvement 44 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS Financial... (1987) Accounting Control and Organizational Behaviour London: Heinemann Otley, D (1994) Management control in contemporary organizations: Towards a wider framework Management Accounting Research, 5, 28 9–99 Otley, D (1999) Performance management: A framework for management control systems research Management Accounting Research, 10, 363– 82 Otley, D (20 01) Extending the boundaries of management accounting. .. source of competitive advantage and financial performance A theoretical framework for management accounting In this chapter we have identified management accounting as part of a broader management control system that is driven by goals and strategy We have also 50 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS expanded the notion of management control to incorporate non-financial performance measurement and a strategic perspective... Accountants (1993) Performance Measurement in the Manufacturing Sector London: Chartered Institute of Management Accountants Daft, R L and Macintosh, N B (1984) The nature and use of formal control systems for management control and strategy implementation Journal of Management, 10(1), 43–66 Dixon, R (1998) Accounting for strategic management: A practical application Long Range Planning, 31 (2) , 27 2–9 Downs, A . by managers for decision-making is subject to the same principles, and therefore to the same limitations. One of the most important pieces of financial information for line 34 ACCOUNTING FOR MANAGERS managers. the accounting process can present limitations for managers in using financial information for decision-making. This has a particular effect in relation to cost, which as we will see throughout Part. based on cost information, because cost information is needed for products and services, rather than for line items. Principles and limitations of accounting There are some basic accounting principles