Abstract Management services as practiced by CPAs have expanded very substantially in the past two decades. The author believes that this expansion is a sensible process reflecting the relevance of the CPA's basic abilities as a systems man and interpreter of financial data, and the logical evolution of the accountant from his role as the practitioner of the first well-developed quantitive method into a broader role based on the new realm of information science. The computer and, more recently, management science have been important catalysts in moving these services to their present status in the CPA environment. At the same time, most of us now realize this is the logical structure for a management services activity in the business environment of the 60's, dominated as it is by the complexity and interconnectedness of its various activities. The scope of consulting activity as performed by professionals operating as members of a CPA firm is a thorny subject. That might be surprising when one observes that consultants have never been beset by any collective difficulty in this regard. They purport to be competent in one or more of the many phases of management; over time the assertion of competence is tested.

Abstract The article highlights that a recent issue of The American Economic Review contained an article challenging the widely held view that depreciation allowances necessarily fail to cover replacement costs during a period of rising prices. This view, it is argued, ignores the effects of physical asset expansion. The present article demonstrates by mathematical techniques that physical growth, by itself, would cause depreciation allowances to exceed replacement costs. It is possible, therefore, that the effect of rising prices on replacement costs may be completely offset by the effect of growth on depreciation allowances. The intention of the article is to demonstrate and analyze these propositions through three arithmetic models and to develop the implications of this analysis. The first model is designed solely to illustrate the effects of physical asset expansion on the relationship between depreciation charges and replacement costs. In the interests of clarity, certain simplifying assumptions are made. They are not essential, however, to the validity of the principles being demonstrated. Two other models will show the effects of altering some of these assumptions.

Abstract Many accountants, both in public and private accounting, have been striving mightily in recent years to see their way through the maze and mists of electronic data processing. To some extent, the highly placed controller or the partner public accountant will be able to dodge the necessity for this new learning by delegating it to the "systems" or department. Controllers discharging this responsibility through their systems departments have the direct responsibility for determining the feasibility of adoption of some electronic data processing layout. Public accountants, if they are rendering management and systems service, face the same problem of adoption and installation with and for their clients. In many respects, the present situation is not unlike that faced by the public accountants twenty-five years ago when punched card accounting techniques were sweeping into the accounting office. For the fully "electronified" areas of the accounting system there will be virtually nothing left of old on-the-scene audit techniques.