Knowledge that Transforms

The article presents information about various universities. Mr. H.A.C. Ross has left the department this year and Mr. A R. Jones has taken his place. Mr. Jones has had a year of accounting practice and is graduate of the University of Kansas. Mr. W. B. Castenholz has been appointed chairman of the Pan-American Committee of the American Society of Certified Public Accountants. Mr. Primus E. Godridge, trust officer of the Bankers Trust Co., who has been in charge of the classes in Ficuciary Accounting for the past fifteen years has resigned. His work will be taken by Mr. Chester .J. Dodge, secretary of the Surrogate's Court, New York County. An act to amend the educational law in relation to the practice of public accounting by Certified Public Accounts has been introduced in the assembly of New York by Mr. F. M. Smith. Mr. B. E. Tiffany, University of South Dakota has installed an electric posting and bookkeeping machine in the accounting laboratory, where students are to be made familiar with machine bookkeeping methods and with the use of calculating machinery.

Reviews the book "Office Machinery and Appliances ," by Lawrence R. Dicksee.

Reviews the book "Laws of Management Applied to Manufacturing," by L.P. Alford.

Reviews the book "How to Analyze Costs," by Coleman L. Maze and John G. Glover.

The article reports that an International Congress on Accounting will be held on September 9 1929 at New York. Foreign visitors will include representatives, from all the principal European countries and from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and Japan. The addresses will be in the form of papers printed in advance in French, German, and English and will be made available before the opening of the Congress. At each meeting the chairman will introduce the author who will lead a discussion of it. The Congress is being financed through sustaining and subscribing memberships costing twenty-five and fifteen dollars respectively.

Reviews the book "Income Tax Procedure," by William B. Castenholz.

The article presents an accounting problem calling for a financial statement showing changes in working capital. It contains certain balance sheet items. The reserve for bad debts applies to 80-day accounts receivable. An addition of $8,000.00 was made to the reserve in 1928 through charges to profit and loss while $189.67 was credited to the reserve during the year, representing accounts collected but charged off in previous years. A total of $125,432.65 has been collected on balances of customers' accounts outstanding at the beginning of the year. The reserve for inventory losses at the end of 1927 was set up in anticipation of subsequent losses on finished goods which proved to be $9,675.22. The latter amount represents the excess of the lower of cost or market at December 31, 1927, over prices actually received upon sale in 1928, and has been included as an extraordinary loss in the profit and loss statement of 1928. A sum of $20,000.00 was added to the reserve at the end of 1928 for similar reasons.

For years the system of setting up a budget at the beginning of the fiscal period has been urged upon business conceits, as of September 1929. For a long time the advantages of the budget have been explained to all those who showed the least interest in the subject. Business men were told that the budget system would render a great service to the business in the fact that budgeting requires planning ahead. They were also told that the budget is the best help in coordinating all the activities of the various departments and the budget can be used as a means for centralized executive control. But in spite of all these arguments in its favor, the budget has never appealed strongly to the business executive. After a few years of experimentation with it, they came to the conclusion that it was not worth the money and the effort spent on it. Budgeting, these businessmen claimed, was nothing but guesswork. In addition these business men claim that the budget is after all no help to management as an instrument of control. For everyone in the concern very likely knows that the budget was a compilation of guesses and therefore could not be used as a standard.

Reviews the book "Money and Banking," by John Thomas Holdsworth.

Reviews the book " Elements of Land Economics," by Richard T. Ely and Edward W. Morehouse.