The Accounting Review Vol. 21 No. 3 1946
STATISTICAL CONTROLS APPLIED TO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.
Abstract
This article focuses on statistical controls applied to financial statements. Most top executives, except controllers, are not specifically trained in accountancy. Yet the top executive spends much of his time on the financial aspects of his business and in the interpretation of accounting records. Sometimes he finds himself studying detailed and massive accounting reports, trying to find in them the clues to his problems. When the analysis of past data has been completed, top management can use the charts for setting goals or objectives in the future, and can follow month by month the progress made toward each goal. It might be argued that these effects of the end of the war would have been realized by top management without the aid of the chart. That is undoubtedly true, but the strength of action charts is found in a number of factors, in their graphic appeal to understanding through the eves, in the power they have to sell all levels of supervision on the necessity and wisdom of management policies, and in the completeness and clarity with which they enable the men at the top of a business to trace the effects of such external events as war, peace, price changes, booms, and depressions.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-7050502
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 267-272
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref