Internal%20Accounting

1
Internal Accounting

• Text Chapter 10 (C L) and Chapter 5 (M W)
• R/3 Profit Cost Reporting

2
Internal Accounting

• Also called Managerial Accounting
• Oriented towards business planning and
  controlling and reducing costs
• cost accounting- direct and indirect
• conventional cost center accounting vs.
  process-oriented view

3
R/3 Internal Accounting Scenarios

• Cost Object Controlling
• Profitability Analysis
• Profit Center Accounting
• Overhead Cost Management

4
Cost Object Controlling

• Costs for manufacturing an object or service are
  collected for a cost object
• planned and actual costs are calculated
• Applicable to repetitive manufacturing, process
  manufacturing and design-to-order
• begins with preliminary costing
• goods in production use simultaneous costing to
  compare planned vs. actual costs
• when finished, period-ending closing begins

5
Cost Object Controlling
Production order is to be created
Creating/ processing prod. order
Prelim. Costing of prod. Orders triggered
Production order is created
Prod. Order preliminary costing
Release of production order
Prod. Order is to be carried out
Production order is partially released
6
Cost Object Controlling (part 2)
Execution of production order
Goods receipt to be posted
Goods receipt process. From production
Production order simultaneous costing
Actual data for period completed
Production order is completed
Material is posted in consumption
Diff. Posted to price diff account
7
Period End Closing and Final Costing
Process costing calculation
Process costing calculation is completed
Overhead calculation
Production order debited with indirect costs
Determine WIP in workplace/ lot processing
8
Period End Closing and Final Costing (Pt 2)
Variance to be calculated
Variance calculation
Production order to be settled against material
Settlement of production order
Remaining cost to price difference acct
Production var. settled to profit analysis
Profitability Analysis
9
Profitability Analysis

• Identifies product/market margins
• Analyzes structure of profit-related criteria
  from specific orders
• these profitability segments include
• Customer
• Product
• Activity
• Organization

10
Profitability Analysis and Planning

• PA output is used to support different types of
  planning
• automatic planning based on a calculation using
  previous year or other forecasting projection
• bottom-up planning using aggregation of
  individual planning levels
• top-down planning from comprehensive plan
• time-based distribution working in seasonality,
  production-dependent time factors

11
Product Profitability Analysis

• Accounting data is used to determine the
  profitability of a company and its products
• Inaccurate and/or incomplete data can lead to a
  flawed analysis
• The three main causes of data problems are
• Inconsistent record keeping
• Inaccurate inventory costing
• Problems consolidating data from subsidiaries

12
Inconsistent Record Keeping

• At Fitter Snacker
• Sales data is not maintained so that sales
  reports are easily generated
• Analyzing sales data by region or division
  usually must be done by hand
• Production data is maintained with paper records
• Data must be typed into a spreadsheet from paper
  records before it can be analyzed
• Manual entry leads to errors
• Without an integrated information system, much of
  the effort in generating reports is devoted to
  working around the limitations of the systems

13
Inaccurate Inventory-Costing Systems

• Correctly calculating inventory costs is an
  important and challenging task in any
  manufacturing company
• A manufactured items cost has three elements
• Cost of raw materials used in the item
• Labor used specifically to produce the product
  (direct labor)
• Overhead all other costs
• Factory utilities
• General factory labor (custodial services,
  security)
• Managers salaries
• Storage
• Insurance

14
Direct and Indirect Costs

• Materials and labor are called direct costs
• Direct costs are relatively easy to tie to the
  production of specific products
• Overhead is an indirect cost
• Indirect costs are difficulty to associate with a
  specific product
• e.g. the relationship between the cost of heating
  and lighting and a specific batch of NRG-A bars
• To determine the cost of a manufactured product,
  indirect costs must be allocated to products

15
Direct and Indirect Costs

• Allocating indirect costs
• One method is to use total machine hours
• Total overhead cost divided by the total machine
  production time (hours) available for a period to
  get an overhead rate per machine hour
• Example
• Overhead costs per month 152,500
• Production line capacity 50 cases/hour
• 160 hours/month

16
Direct and Indirect Costs

• Allocating indirect costs
• Another method is to use direct labor hours
• The assumption with this method is that overhead
  costs are incurred so workers can do their jobs
• For Fitter Snacker, the snack bar bake line is
  the fundamental production process as well as
  capacity constraint, so allocating indirect costs
  using machine hours (snack bar bake line hours)
  would make sense

17
Standard Costs

• Costs are typically recorded using standard
  costs, which are based on historical cost data
• At the end of an accounting period, adjustments
  to accounts must be made as actual costs will
  differ from estimates made using standard costs
• Balance sheet cost of inventory held will need
  to be adjusted
• Income statement cost of goods sold will have to
  be adjusted
• Difference between actual costs and standard
  costs are called cost variances
• Cost variances arise with both direct and
  indirect costs

18
Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

• In ABC, records are kept on overhead costs and
  the activities associated with overhead cost
  generation
• The goal is to more precisely associate costs
  with the causes (drivers) and avoid rough
  allocation procedures
• Profitability of particular products is more
  accurately determined
• ABC is often used when
• Competition is stiff
• Overhead costs are high
• Products are diverse
• Not all overhead costs can be linked to activities

19
Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

• ABC requires more bookkeeping than traditional
  cost- accounting approaches
• ABC is often used for strategic purposes in
  parallel with standard cost accounting
• A recent study noted that
• ERP companies had nearly twice as many
  cost-allocation bases to use in management
  decision-making
• ERP companies managers rated their
  cost-accounting system much higher

20
Companies with Subsidiaries

• Companies with subsidiaries must prepare
  financial statements for each subsidiary, plus be
  able to provide a consolidated statement for the
  entire company
• Different currencies and transactions between
  subsidiary companies can make the consolidation
  task challenging
• Currency translation is challenging because
  exchange rates fluctuate daily
• Intercompany transactions must be handled
  properly
• Sales from one subsidiary to another within a
  company do not result in a profit or loss,
  because no money has entered or left the
  consolidated company

21
Example Microsoft

• Microsoft must consolidate financial information
  from 130 subsidiaries
• Prior to installing SAP R/3, each subsidiary did
  accounting in its own system, then transmitted
  the files to another system, where manipulation
  of the data was required
• Subsidiaries used different systems, with
  different field sizes, types of characters,
  account structures, etc.
• Consolidation took over a week
• With SAP R/3, Microsoft can look directly at
  financial activity at any subsidiary around the
  world

22
Management Reporting with ERP Systems

• Reporting accounting information is often
  challenging
• Without an ERP system, obtaining the information
  needed for a report is frequently a monumental
  task
• With ERP, the information is in a single system,
  however
• The system configuration must be set to gather
  the correct raw data
• The appropriate reports are needed, which may
  require custom coding (e.g. ABAP)

23
Document Flow for Customer Service

• In SAP R/3, Document Flow is a tool that finds,
  organizes and displays a summary of all documents
  related to a sales order
• Sales orders can be very complicated, with
• multiple products
• multiple shipments
• multiple invoices
• multiple payments
• Being able to find all related documents easily
  is important in providing efficient customer
  service

24
Details of any document can be viewed from the
document flow screena process known as drilling
down
Figure 5.6 Document flow of a transaction in SAP
R/3
25
Management-Reporting and Analysis Tools

• Because ERP systems use a database, the database
  can be queried to provide a wide range of reports
  and analyses
• Because reports access the same database where
  transactions are recorded, reporting and analysis
  requests can slow down the processing of regular
  business transactions
• SAP R/3 has built-in information systems (SIS,
  LIS, etc.) with their own data tables for
  analysis
• Business Warehouse (BW) is a completely separate
  system that extracts data from the SAP R/3 system
• BW provides greater reporting flexibility and can
  combine data from other information systems

26
Enron Collapse

• Enron was a trailblazing energy company that was
  revolutionizing the oil and gas business and
  making millionaires of its investors
• On Oct. 16, 2001, Enrons creative financial
  arrangements began to unravel
• On Dec. 2, 2001, Enron made the largest
  bankruptcy filing in history
• A primary cause of the collapse was Enrons
  partnerships that shifted billions of debt off
  Enrons books so that Enron could borrow money
  more cheaply
• Arthur Andersen, a highly regarded accounting
  firm, had annually issued annual reports
  attesting to the validity of Enrons financial
  statements

27
Enron Collapse

• Arthur Andersen was indicted for, among other
  things, the destruction of Enron documents in the
  face of an SEC investigation
• As a result of the Enron collapse
• Enrons 20,000 creditors will receive
  approximately 20 of the 63 billion they are
  owed
• Shareholders will receive nothing
• Many employees invested large sums of money in
  Enron stock via 401K savings plans
• Arthur Andersen, once a firm with 28,000
  employees, has been all but dismantled
• 31 individuals either have been tried or will be
  tried on criminal charges
• The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed

28
Sarbanes-Oxley

• The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is designed to encourage
  top management accountability
• Top managers in recent scandals (Enron, WorldCom,
  Global Crossing) have claimed ignorance of
  accounting abuses
• Title IX of Sarbanes-Oxley requires a companys
  CEO and CFO to sign a statement that financial
  statements comply with SEC rules
• Penalties can be up to 5 million and 20 years in
  prison
• Title II restricts the non-audit services that an
  auditor can provide

29
Sarbanes-Oxley and ERP

• Title IV of the act specifies more stringent
  requirements for financial reporting
• Section 404 requires a public companys annual
  report contain managements internal control
  report
• The control report outlines managements
  responsibility for
• Establishing and maintaining adequate internal
  control over financial reporting
• Assess the effectiveness of its internal control
  over financial reporting
• To meet the internal control report requirements,
  a company must document the controls that are in
  place and verify that they are not subject to
  error or manipulation

30
Sarbanes-Oxley and ERP

• An integrated information system provides the
  tools to implement internal controls
• Controls cannot necessarily prevent a pervasive
  effort to circumvent standard processes by a
  companys leadership (e.g. Enron)
• Companies with ERP systems in place will have an
  easier time complying with Sarbanes-Oxley than
  those without

31
Archiving

• In SAP R/3, there are limited situations where
  data can just be deleted
• If data could just be deleted, an unscrupulous
  employee could
• Create a fictitious vendor
• Post an invoice from the vendor
• Make payment to a Swiss bank account
• Delete all records of the transactions so the
  fraud wont be detected
• In SAP R/3, most data must be archived before it
  can be removed from the system, so auditors can
  reconstruct the companys financial position at
  any point in time

32
Data on a companys materials cannot be deleted
directly, but must be archived for deletion
Figure 5.7 Transaction options for material
master data
33
SAP R/3 maintains detailed records on all changes
made to material master data
Figure 5.8 Change record for material master
34
User Authorizations

• A fundamental tool to avoid fraud is separation
  of duties and user authorizations
• To complete critical business processes, more
  than one employee must participate so that a
  single employee cannot commit a fraud
• User authorizations ensure that employees can
  only perform those transactions required for
  their job
• SAP R/3s Profile Generator provides a simple
  method for creating user authorizations based on
  the functions (transactions) a user should be
  allowed to perform
• Pre-defined roles make developing authorizations
  easier

35
Menu paths/transactions that a person assigned
the role of maintaining management master data
can perform
Figure 5.9 Role for material management master
data
36
Tolerance Groups

• Another way to ensure that employees do not
  exceed their authority (and to minimize the risk
  from fraud and abuse) is to set limits on the
  size of a transaction that an employee can
  process
• Tolerance groups are predefined limits on an
  employees ability to post a transaction
• Tolerance limits can be set on items like
• Line items in a document
• Total document amount
• Payment difference
• Discounts

37
No group specified, so this is the default
tolerance
The default only allows posting of documents for
1,000 or less
Payments can differ by 10 or 1
Figure 5.10 Default tolerance group
38
Financial Transparency

• An advantage of an ERP system is the ability to
  drill down from a report to the source
  documents (transactions) that created it
• Drill down capability makes it easier for
  auditors to verify the integrity of reports and
  financial statements
• By double-clicking on an item in a report in SAP
  R/3, the user will be taken to the document(s)
  that created the created the item

39
Double-clicking on the 8,810.00 debit will
provide details on the transactions that make up
the item
Figure 5.11 G/L (general ledger) account balance
for raw material consumption
40
Selecting the 10.00 item and clicking on the
details icon will provide more information on the
item
Figure 5.12 Documents that make up G/L Account
Balance for Raw Material Consumption
41
Figure 5.13 Details on 10.00 line item in G/L
account for raw material
consumption
42
Another LookThe One-Day Close

• Some companies strive to close the books in one
  day
• Other companies take days, weeks and even months
  to get all the financial figures correct and in
  balance
• Some companies perform virtual closings,
  simulating the closing process at various times
  during the month to see how well the company is
  doing
• Ciscos closing went from 2 weeks to 1 day by
  switching from un-integrated systems to Oracle
  ERP
• With ERP, companies can streamline their
  financial supply chains, holding less cash in the
  same way supply chains hold less inventory

43
Summary

• Companies need accounting systems to record
  transactions and generate financial statements.
  The accounting system should let the user
  summarize data in meaningful ways. The data can
  then be used to assist managers in their
  day-to-day work and in long-range planning.
• With un-integrated information systems,
  accounting data might not be current, and this
  can cause problems when trying to make
  operational decisions, such as granting credit.
  Data can also be inaccurate because of weaknesses
  in un-integrated systems, and this problem can
  have an effect on decision-making and therefore
  on profitability.

44
Summary

• Closing the books at the end of an accounting
  period can be difficult with an un-integrated IS,
  but it is relatively easy with an integrated IS.
  Closing the books means zeroing out the temporary
  accounts.
• Using an integrated IS and a common database to
  record accounting data has important inventory
  cost-accounting benefits. More precise record
  keeping is possible, and this can lead to more
  accurate product cost calculations. These, in
  turn, can help managers decide which products are
  profitable and which are not.

45
Summary

• The use of an integrated system and a common
  database to record accounting data has important
  management-reporting benefits. The user has
  built-in drill-down and query tools available as
  a result.
• The introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a
  2002 U.S. federal regulation written and passed
  in the wake of the Enron collapse, promotes top
  management accountability by requiring extra
  financial approval and reporting. Because ERP
  systems can help companies meet the requirements
  of this legislation, the act has increased the
  need for integrated data reporting.