Lease accounting, Operating leases

Accounting assumes continuity, but this means that the financial statements prepared by breaking the continuous stream of activity into periodic segments, even under the most favorable circumstances, provisional in character. Continuity serves to complement and strengthen the concept of earning power, the income statement is a means of making available a section of the continuous flow of cost and revenue to exhibit management's effectiveness in handling available resources. In consequence, it should recognize all special and non-recurring losses and gains, as these elements modify the long run income stream. The basic idea of measured consideration" is broad enough to encompass the entire range of accounting measurements, it is superior to "value" because values bring in measurements of another and different order. Value would include amounts for utilities not measurable except by one's own judgment until a sale confirms this added utility its measurement is not objectively possible. However, the use of money and price as measurement devices should not obscure the fact that the significant element behind the accounts is service potentialities, which, when exchanged, bring other service-potentialities into the enterprise.

In the real world of business affairs, however, the conception of the controller as a member of the management team, contributing to and concerned with the problems of overall administration and effective control, has grown. And it is becoming apparent that the subject of controllership (as apart from the professional aspects of public accounting) is not only relevant to, but important for collegiate business schools. Courses under the title of controllership are growing in number, and there are now at least thirty schools that offer a course in this subject. Part of this is attributable to the appearance of textbooks and other teaching materials emphasizing the viewpoint and the content of the controllership notion, but the underlying factor is the need for education of a different sort than is provided by professional specialization in accounting. On the whole, it is a fairly obvious fact that many of the students who "major" in accounting actually find their ultimate careers outside the field of public accounting.