Abstract Many of the experienced teachers, as well as some of the new ones, have developed devices and techniques for the presentation of certain knotty aspects of accounting. This article presents suggestions that might well be made available to other members of the teaching profession through publication in the magazine "Accounting Review." This article presents a method of elementary presentation of volume, cost and profit relationships. The material that follows is designed to be used in the classroom as a simple but highly effective method of explaining and illustrating (a) the concept of unit costs, and practical managerial uses of unit costs (b) the mild enigma that a reduction of unit sales price can result on occasion in an increase of aggregate net profits, and(c) the concepts of marginal costs, break-even point, and optimum profits. A class period of one hour is usually sufficient for presentation and discussion of the subject. The material should be presented in a sequence of steps.

Abstract In the study of standard costs, the learner usually has difficulty in determining variances in the accounting for the elements of cost and in setting up entries to record these variances. Generally, less difficulty is encountered in computing and recording variances for direct materials and direct labor, where variances are usually considered to arise from two sources, price variations and quantity variations, than is encountered in computing and recording variances for manufacturing expenses, where variances are usually considered to arise from three sources, budget excess variation, idle capacity variation, and efficiency variation. This discussion will disregard the problems arising out of the handling of variances for direct materials and direct labor, it will present a method which has been used successfully by students in learning to determine and to record the three variances that arise in the handling of the manufacturing expenses. Since manufacturing expenses are entered at an applied rate, a difference will usually exist between the actual and the applied expenses at the end of the period. This difference is classified as over-or under-applied manufacturing expenses and is, in reality, a price variation.