Abstract In the corporate system, accounting has come of age. Accounting, the language of business, has grown in stature and importance and power in direct relation to the growth of industrial productivity. In the individual enterprise the measurement of production and of the division of the product occurs through the process of accounting for income. Its end-result is the income statement. Two factors make the job at this time more difficult than ever. The the public seems to have a basic lack of confidence in corporate accounting, brought about largely by a confusion of language and what has been aptly termed a growing "scatterization of methods." Being tied to a monetary unit, corporate accounting has limitations because it has no mechanism to adjust for changes in value of the monetary unit, In times such as the present when a seeming prosperity is interwoven with an obvious inflation, these factors have a cumulative effect. As the corporate system goes, so goes the economy. As the economy goes, so goes the political and social structure. Somehow the problem of economic balance must be solved or all of society will, in one way or another, either end in dictatorship or revert to the "pre-industry revolution" status of family self -sufficiency in which there are not problems of exchange or distribution.

Abstract Today small business binds together many diverse threads of a current problem which is visualized as containing jar-reaching implications, not alone economic but also social and political. Big business is seen as growing ever bigger, more concentrated, and more firmly entrenched, with small business at an ever-increasing disadvantage. The World War is blamed for much of the condition, because the productive power and the know-how in the hands of the larger companies gave them, during that period, an opportunity for tremendous growth and expansion in facilities and permitted them to add materially to their resources. Capital is, of course, essential in some degree to almost any business. In a merchandising venture funds must be available for the purchase of inventories and to finance sales during the period between shipment and collection. The condition of governmental red tape, regulation, and annoyance is a troublesome one for small business. The government of a complex industrial nation like the U.S. must impose controls, limitations, and restrictions on its subjects for the betterment of small businesses in the country.

Abstract This article comments on inventory pricing and changes in price levels. Ideally, the measurement of accounting profit involves the matching precisely of the identified costs of specific units of product with the sales revenues derived there from. Secondly, where conditions are such that precise matching of identified costs with revenues is impracticable, identified cost matching may be simulated by the adoption of an assumed flow of costs. Also, a flow assumption can be realistic, in that it reflects the dominant characteristics of the actual flow of goods; thus it may reflect an actual dominance of first-in, first-out, average, or last-in, first-out movement. A flow assumption can be artificial, on the other hand, in that it premises a flow of costs that is clearly in contrast with actual physical movement. However, the periodic income of a business enterprise is computed by deducting from the revenues of the period the costs which are properly associated with those revenues. In the case of certain costs, for example sales commissions, the relationship to the revenues of a period is quite direct and the matching process is accomplished with a minimum of uncertainty.

Abstract This article discusses the information on the paragraph no. 5. The Paragraph No. 5 under "Expense" in the 1948 Revision of Accounting Concepts and Standards Underlying Corporate Financial Statements of the U.S. reads that An assignment of all or a portion of the cost of an asset to expense, made in good faith after considered judgment and after competent review, in accordance with the accounting concepts and standards of the time, is not subject to reversal in a later period. Errors of a mechanical and non-judgment nature should be corrected in the period of their discovery. The Committee on Concepts and Standards is in agreement with the apparent basic purpose of this statement to reduce the possibility of manipulation of the net income calculation through reversals, revisions and reaccounting of past depredation charges and other amortizations. At the same time it recognizes that a position unalterably opposed to the correction of errors of judgment is both arbitrary and difficult to defend.

Abstract The article focuses on recommendations presented by the American Accounting Association's Committee on Concepts and Standards, regarding the use of term "reserve" in accounting. The committee recommended that the term reserve should not be employed in published financial statements of business corporations, appropriations of retained income should not be made or displayed in such a manner as to create misleading inferences, and the reserve section in corporate balance sheets should be eliminated and its elements exhibited as deduction-from-asset, or liability, or retained income amounts. In general usage, outside of accounting, a reserve is a fund of cash or other assets. In accounting the term has been used to caption a variety of balance sheet items including segregated retained income, segregated asset, asset valuation and asset amortization amounts, and liabilities. It has been recommended that the word reserve be restricted to captions describing appropriated retained income. The committee believes that the popular understanding of financial statements, and the thinking of the profession, would be promoted by abandoning the term.