Don’t Let Your Costing Ego Get In The Way
A friend of mine recently took a job as controller of a start-up manufacturing company. When I found out I said to him: “oh, so now you can be my client!” Although I was being factious, I was also...
View ArticleProblems Have Solutions – Predicaments Have Outcomes
Anyone who knows me semi-well can tell you that I AWLAYS carry a notebook with me wherever I go. Yes, I am in the technology age of IPhone, IPad and IPod, but I still require my notebook. The purpose...
View Article‘Tis The Season
If you read my title, you may think this post is overdue with reference to the Holiday season, but I am referring to the start of tax season and new hires. I believe I have written about something...
View ArticleCosting For Scrap
In many industries scrap has become big business. Some commodities have a very high scrap value and scrap has changed from an after-thought to a strategic part of doing business. The other day a...
View ArticleHow Healthy is Your Cost System?
This is an interesting concept, to think about how healthy your cost system is? We think of cost systems being useful as providing information and as being reliable, but never in terms of whether they...
View ArticleHow to handle the “I am right and you are wrong”
What do you do when you know you are right and the owner of the business you work for is wrong? At our cost forum yesterday we had a participant ask this very question. He is the controller for a...
View ArticleCommon Costing Themes: Questions Anyone?
I recently heard a speaker say that he believes the whole point of management accounting is to generate questions. I could not agree more! We held another forum last week and pretty much similar to...
View ArticleTwo cost systems = One Reconciliation
One of the participants at our most recent cost forum started a discussion about how to reconcile two costing systems based on two different premises, and the difficulty of accomplishing that task. In...
View ArticleDo you know what to do?
I was watching tv the other day and a commercial for IBM came on and the tagline of the commercial was something like: Looking at data and knowing what to do with it-now that’s a different thing....
View ArticleIt Always Comes Back to COST
Come out of your office On to the shop floor See what is happening “on the other side of the wall” Take it BACK to your office and apply it Quote from FORBES article: “But it was also the inability to...
View ArticleTeach Me How To Fall and How to Walk… In Cost Accounting
I have recently started to do Judo at the Bushido Kai America Judo Club. If you are not aware Judo is the second most popular sport in the world just behind Soccer. My husband is a black belt in Judo...
View ArticleWhen Do I Need to Review My Cost System?
One of the questions we hear most frequently at our cost forums is, “how frequently should my cost system be updated?” Some people ask the question directly while for some it is apparent from their...
View ArticleAssumptions. How Accurate Are They?
Have you ever heard the term that if you assume something you make an ….well, you get the picture, right? http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Assume In my experience, cost modeling often uses a lot of...
View ArticleThe Second Worst Cost Accounting System I Ever Saw
A year or so ago I wrote an article about the worst cost accounting system I ever saw. I came across this system years ago when I was first beginning my career in public accounting. It was related to a...
View ArticleHappy New Year!
For many of my calendar year corporations, this time of year represents an important point in the annual cost accounting cycle. By now, most of my calendar year end corporations have prepared their...
View ArticleGetting To Know Your Company
The other day we had a meeting over lunch where everyone from William Vaughan Company got together to briefly talk about the various specialty services we offer. We recently acquired another accounting...
View ArticleBarriers to Transitioning Your Cost System?
A frequent topic in today’s business news relates to current management’s unwillingness to accept new and more robust cost systems and how the delay in adopting a new cost system is expensive to...
View ArticleChange A Number, Change Views
Even though my true passion lies in costing models and the profitability of businesses, during tax season I must return to my true job, tax returns! This week, I made a mistake. Well, actually two! I...
View ArticleTaking it to the Next Level
This was the first Saturday “post-wrestling” season. Last Saturday, my son was awarded the prize for points leader in his age group for Monroe County wrestlers. He won first place at every tournament...
View ArticleWatch Your Waste
I’ve seen a big craze lately on up-recycling where old clothes, or scrap pieces of materials, etc. are used to create something new. I, for one, am not very crafty and have not tried to do any of these...
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