The Accounting Review Vol. 6 No. 1 1931
A COST APPROACH TO ELEMENTARY BOOKKEEPING.
Abstract
During the long evolution of bookkeeping, the teaching process has made use of several methods of approach. By the mid of the nineteenth century, more attention was directed to ledger accounts as a preliminary to analyzing transactions into debits and credits. This was the method wherein the purpose of the usual accounts, and their plus and minus characteristics, formed the ground work of instruction. Modern bookkeeping requirements are becoming increasingly complex within a framework of a methodology which was much more adequate years ago. Students of elementary bookkeeping feel the consequent difficulties, although they do not understand them. After considerable effort they manage to learn against perfectly natural impulses to the contrary that expense is not an asset, and that inventory is not an expense although it consists of purchased goods which, in a purchase account, are treated like expenses. The task is not of teaching procedure, but of teaching ways of thinking about business transactions.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-8593958
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 33-41
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref