HELP FOR INDUSTRY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 3

HELP FOR INDUSTRY

IMPROVED ACCOUNTANCY Lorcl Austin, at a dinner of the English Society of Incorporated Accountants’ and Auditors, indicated that an increasing responsibility was resting on the modern accountant in the business world. He remarked that laws and regulations, especially those relating to public companies, had been increased and complicated as industry developed, and threatened to become even worse, It was nice to think they had the accountant to keep them clear of the many pitfalls that Government legislation had put in their path, but there was also a need for more development on the practical side and for accountancy to be brought more into line with the revolutionary industrial advances which had taken place, especially within the past twenty years. The training of the accountant fitted him to take an even more responsible place in industry than he was doing, but his activities should tend more to the practical than the legal side, He should tell them what they must do, not what they must not do, At present he was too apt to come in at the Inquest, instead of insisting upon curative treatment When the disease was just developing. ‘lnstead of books being rigorously examined and balance made at the end of the financial year, in future it might be necessary for results and balance sheets to appear every four weeks, or even weekly. Only a few days before he had read of a concern with a turnover in excess of nine hundred million pounds, whose annual report had taken almost eight months to prepare and publish. He referred to the G.P.O. If this, one of the most efficient organisations in the world, took the best part of a year to decide its trading position, there were considerable possibilities for improvement and speeding up in accounting methods.

Mr E. Cassleton Elliott (a leading member of the Society) said he agreed with Lord Austin that the accountancy profession must develop on constructive lines oven more than in the past. The Society had a Research Committee which was initiating new activities and thought, and which, in time, would publish its results.

The day had gone by when the acme of success of an accountant was merely being able to balance books. Incorporated Accountants were concerned much more with constructive accountancy, that is, they wanted to be of increasing service to their clients. They were anxious to help in every possible way. It might be in regard to machine accountancy or in other directions. Speeding up results was essential for the success of a business. It was no use twelve months after the event telling a client he had lost money. They must tell him immediately—weekly, if necessary, He must know as soon as the week was finished what his result had been, definitely, and without question. Budgetary control was a thing that tfieyi as accountants, must introduce more frequently not only in the larger business, but in the small business too. They could all budget ahead; in effect, it was nothing new, for every good housewife budgeted ahead for her expenditure.