Reviews the book "College Accounting- Intermediate/Advanced," by Horace Brock, Charles E. Palmer and Fred Archer.

Abstract This article focuses on the product-costing aspects of process costing. First-in, first-out (Fifo) process costing has been overemphasized in cost accounting texts and in the Certified Public Accountants examination; it should be pruned from major consideration in courses and examinations. Fifo process costing is unnecessarily complex, is not used in practice, and is theoretically weak. Before examining the reasons for this position, it should be noted that this article concentrates on the product-costing aspects of process costing. It is concerned only incidentally with planning and control. By definition, process costing is a type of product costing that deals with the mass production of like units which usually move in continuous fashion through a series of manufacturing steps called operations or processes. The complexities and conflicts between weighted-average and Fifo costing methods are eliminated by using standard costs.

Abstract This article focuses on a study which discussed the views of accounting professors on the problem of efficient utilization of faculty in the teaching of elementary accounting. The need for more efficient utilization of the teaching staff is a pressing problem today with mounting enrollments and a continuing shortage of qualified accounting professors. Some universities have kept their elementary accounting sections small by staffing them with graduate assistants. Other schools schedule large lecture-hall sections taught be regular faculty members. Others reach a large number of students with a single professor via television. The author conducted a study in which thirty-two leading accounting professors presented their views on the problem of more efficient utilization of faculty in the teaching of elementary accounting. The conflict inherent in large group instruction between the necessity of providing instruction to large numbers of students and the desirability of close personal contact between instructor and students is unresolved.

Abstract This article focuses on the use of computer-assisted instruction for the computation of debit and credit accounting. As financial transactions occur, documents are prepared and filed in the usual way. Each transaction is analyzed into one or more pairs of equal debits and credits. Each such pair is entered in a magnetic tape as four numbers: a file number, the number of the account debited, the number of the account credited, and the dollar amount. The tape is fed into the computer, which is programmed to ignore the file number, to choose the table row headed by the debited account's number and the column headed by the credited account's number, and to add the dollar amount to the total in the cell thus designated. National income accounting was created on the enterprise accounting model. It was vigorously developed by economists and statisticians, who converted the double-entry accounts and trial balances into input-output tables of the national economy.

Abstract this article focuses on the accounting concepts useful for accounting students. The ultimate test of one's knowledge of concepts (as opposed to his rote memorization of their definitions) lies in his ability properly to apply the concepts to problems or situations with which he has never before been confronted. The "investment funds" concept is, like the investment credit, an attempt to achieve certain objectives of fiscal policy by inserting special provisions in the tax law. The investment funds system is a tax incentive scheme designed to promote a shift of private investment from periods of boom to periods of recession. The investment funds concept described in the article is a highly simplified version of a system currently in use in, Sweden. The assignment could have been made considerably more difficult by making the definition of "investment funds" more closely correspond to the Swedish system.

Abstract This article focuses on the conventional methods of calculating depreciation often involve the arbitrary allocation of the historical cost of a fixed asset. The use of discounted cash-flow techniques has been advocated by a number of authors as the ideal basis for allocating the cost of an asset over its useful life. In the latter method, depreciation is regarded as the periodic reduction in the value of a fixed asset arising from a change in the asset's expected future benefits. Briefly, this method requires that the estimated future net services of the asset, including the scrap value, be discounted to their present value at the end of each accounting period. The future net services of an asset are the cash inflows of the business attributable to the use of that asset alone, that is, not attributable to other outlays, for example, for labor, materials, and maintenance or repair. This article examines the implications of changes in expectations for depreciation, first, when the discount rate is the internal rate and, second, when it is an external rate such as the cost of capital.

Reviews the book "The Accounting Frontier," edited by R.J. Chambers, L. Goldberg, and R.L. Mathews.

Reviews the book "Advanced Consolidation of Financial Statements," by H.S. Cillers and S. Rossouw.