Usually I am fairly rational and do not let my personal emotions interfere with how I interact with others. However, as the readers of my blogs and articles may have detected, my more recent writings increasingly reflect my frustrations with old school accountants. I cannot disguise my irritation and annoyance with accountants who refuse to be progressive.

Several of the titles of my articles these past few years provide hints and clues as to the source of my frustrations. They include “Are Accountants Homo Accounticus?”, “Some Accountants are the Blind Leading the Blind”, “Movie Sequel – Pirate Accounts of the Carribean”, “Cowboy Accountants – The Lawless Frontier”, and “Do Accountants Lead or Mislead?”

Each time I post an article I’ve written like those I receive several personal e-mails that are supportive of my view. Some are even more vitriolic. Receiving these e-mails, and also the publicly posted website comments to my written pieces, further motivate me to continue broadcasting my message of frustration often shaming accountants. I call it MBE or “management by embarrassment.”

At this point some of you may be asking yourself, OK. What the heck is bugging Gary that he is so frustrated about?” The simple answer is it is the slow adoption rate of applying activity-based costing (ABC) principles as a replacement for the flawed and misleading traditional “cost allocation” methods from standard cost accounting systems. They typically use non-causal cost allocation factors. Examples are the number or amount of direct labor input dollars, units produced, sales volume, headcount, or square feet/meters.

Benefits from applying ABC in comparison to traditional cost allocation methods that violate “costing’s causality principle” are too numerous to list here. Key benefits are: (1) extremely more accurate profit and cost reporting of outputs, products, services, channels and customers; (2) transparency and visibility of the “drivers” for work activities and their magnitude; and (3) past period calibrated cost consumption rates that are essential to multiply against future forecasted demand volume and mix that determine resource capacity requirements – workforce headcounts and spending amounts. These rates are needed for what-if scenario analysis, make-versus-buy decisions, and driver-based rolling financial forecasts and budgets.

Causality is at the heart of ABC. For example, if the quantity of the activity driver increases 20% then its activity cost should also increase 20%. The work activities are what consume the resource capacity expenses. My opinion is that any CFO or financial controller who are using traditional cost allocation methods and are not using ABC where it is applicable (which is for most organizations) is being irresponsible in their duty to provide valid information to managers and employees. The information they are providing is faulty, distorted and deceiving.

Now read the first letter of the six prior paragraphs as if together they are a two word sentence. My message is blunt: USE ABC !

ABOUT THE SPEAKER / AUTHOR

Gary Cokins, CPIM
(gcokins@garycokins.com; phone 919 720 2718)
www.garycokins.com

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in advanced cost management and enterprise performance and risk management systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC, an advisory firm located in Cary, North Carolina at www.garycokins.com. He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. He then worked 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS. From 1997 until recently Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a leading provider of enterprise performance management and business analytics and intelligence software. His two most recent books are Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces to Close the Intelligence Gap (ISBN 0-471-57690-5) and Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics (ISBN 978-0-470-44998-1). His most recent book is Predictive Business Analytics (ISBN 978-1-118-17556-9), published by John Wiley & Sons. Mr. Cokins can be contacted at gcokins@garycokins.com.

Linkedin.com contact:
www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949

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