| 3. Cost Forecasting. In this category, I place those websites that hopefully can assist the management accountant with information on forecasting costs. Sites included in this category are intended to provide not only information on the traditional forecasting methods management accountants often used, but also access forecasting cost tools on the Internet, e.g. an interactive system for estimating shipping costs. Sites are also included that relate to the cost estimating functions traditionally done by company personnel other than accountants. As for purchasing, it seems to me, management accountants should also be conversant with cost estimating functions. A good site for showing problems that can result from graphing cost data associated with outputs is at the Vanderbilt University site, www.mba.vanderbilt.edu/germain.boer/mgt413/regress/regresexamp.html. The University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School’s Marketing Department maintains a site, www-marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/forecsst/welcome.html, that seeks to summarize, from the site, all useful knowledge about forecasting (not limited to cost forecasting) for use by researches, practitioners, and educators. Definitions and explanations for forecasting terminology can be found at www.morris.wharton.upenn.edu/forecast/dictionary, maintained by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Other sites can be found on the Internet that are interactive and from which you can gain estimated costs related to specific areas. At the site, www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/manage/machinery, maintained by the University of Illinois, you can estimate the costs for tractors, combines, and field equipment. These estimates are useful for setting custom rates for machinery operations, establishing rental rates for farm machinery, and analyzing machinery costs on farms. At wwwapps.ups.com/QCCWebApp/request?iso_language=en&iso_country=US, you can get an estimate of UPS shipping costs to any worldwide destination. Definitions of terms used in the cost estimating field can be found at the Society of Cost Estimating and Analysis site www.sceaonline.net, by clicking on Search & Glossary, and the clicking SCEA Glossary. At www.get-a-quote.net/costbook/abbrev.htm, common abbreviations used by construction cost estimators are defined. Employee burden and labor cost data can also be found at this site. 4. Cost Accounting. In this category, I place those websites that, hopefully, will help management accountants in their roles as analysts of company costs, and as advisors to the company and implementers of programs to improve the company’s understanding, use, and control of costs. Information at the websites in this category deal with accounting and management approaches to understanding, using, and controlling costs. Links are provided to sites with information on activity-based costing, target costing, and cost of quality principles. Links for found sites that might help in cost accounting and analysis are included. Two good sites for activity-based costing (ABC) information are www.pitt.edu/~roztocki/abc/abc.htm, maintained by Professor Narcyz Rostocki at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and www.offtech.com.au/abc/home.asp, maintained by the Australian company Offtech Computing Pty Ltd. Both sites provide access to principles on ABC and links to other sites with ABC-related information. The Offtech site is especially extensive in the number of links provided. Detailed analysis and accounting for costs in the target cost management concept is found at www.npd-solutions.com/target.html, maintained by DRM Associates. The site, www.isixsigma.com, maintained by consultants, provides substantial free information related to managing and implementing quality in organizations. Searching this site using the term “cost of quality” returned 464 hits, all easily accessible from the site. A useful page at www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/glossary.asp gives definitions of terms used in quality management. Other sites were found that might serve as good sources of cost accounting information and ideas related to cost analysis. A site at Vanderbilt University, www.mba.vanderbilt.edu/germain.boer/mgt413/Product%20Cost/product.htm provides a primer on determining product costs for internal and external reporting. An article at www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv12n1/reg12n1-rubin.html, written by Consumer Product Safety Commission-affiliated authors, provides some insights into the various types of costs to a company when the company experiences a product recall. A site, maintained by Professor James Martin at the University of South Florida, provides cost accounting concepts, practices, and articles. From this site, www.maaw.info/indexx.htm, click “Search MAAW or any site”, and then use the “Search This Site” choice to determine what is available at the site. 5. Internet Databases With Cost Information. Several websites have databases of journals and other publications that contain a relatively high amount of cost information of potential interest to management accountants. Each website has a site search system that is easy to use and access is provided to at least the title and an abstract of the article. Frequently, the full article is available on line for reading. These databases cover a wide range of publication types from news releases to research articles. Also, cost information can be found in the four categories discussed above - cost data, cost trends, cost forecasting, and cost accounting. From CFO magazine’s home page, www.cfo.com, previous CFO articles can be searched and read. Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. maintains a site at www.ssrn.com that covers over 50,000 abstracts and 30,000 full papers from researches and analysts in accounting, finance management, and other business topics. At www.findarticles.com/cf-dls/PI/index.jhtml, maintained by LookSmart, Ltd, searches over 125 business and finance-related publications and provides access to the articles on-line. Industry Week magazine maintains a site at www.industryweek.com that provides searching and access to articles appearing in previous issues. The site webcpa.com, maintained by CCH, Inc., provides on-line access to three accounting-oriented journals or magazines: Accounting Today; Accounting Technology; and Practical Accountant. 6. “Mega” Websites on the Internet. I have found sites on the Internet that, it seems to me, primarily serve the purpose of having great power in directing the site’s visitor to Internet sites related to a particular topic. These are sites that can be very helpful by quickly directing you to potentially relevant sites. Using these “mega” sites does, sometimes, require time at the site to optimize the search results. These sites should be considered for use when looking for cost information. One of the best of these is WWW Virtual Library: Economics at www.netec.wustl.edu/WebEc/EconVLib.html, maintained by Professors Lauri Saarinen at the Helsinki School of Economics and Bill Goffe at the University of Southern Mississippi. Another site is FEDSTATS at www.fedstats.gov, maintained by the federal government. A third site, also a federal government-maintained site, is FIRSTGOV at www.firstgov.gov. Both of these government mega sites find links to US government web pages with information related to the search term. End. Please click here if you would like to comment on this article or suggest a topic for an article. Please click here to return to the Management Accounting Information Center’s homepage. |
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| Cost-Related Information Relevant to Management Accounting on the Internet |